Ponting's half-leave, half-monstrosity

Ponting spits in his hands, has alarmingly hairy arms and, if his performance in a new ad is anything to go by, wears a scarf badly. When he bats, though, it’s rarely ugly. He has a bustling no nonsense elegance, brutal pulling and hooking and just enough flair on the leg side.

Today, he was ugly. In fact, that’s just not the right term. He was the cricketing equivalent of walking into a public toilet cubicle that you think is closed but is actually being used by an elderly person who couldn’t work the lock. And not one of those pretty self cleaning modern toilets either.

His shot started with an idea to leave, then he dropped his bat down when the ball didn’t swing, and he ended up walking off before the umpire had triggered him. Perhaps he was just on the move because his legs and torso were performing non-complying acts. Or he was thinking that the faster he gets off the ground the less time they’d have to show the replay.

It was a horror dismissal in every way. For me it reminded me of the film Critters. Not the original, but Critters 3, the one set in a tall building with rich people you wanted to see eaten, which had Leonardo DiCaprio in his first film role. Ponting was beaten by the pace and low movement by a cunning, hairy and desperate alien and he was bitten hard, before limping away for his life. This isn’t a reference to Tim Southee’s teeth either, I’m talking about the delivery, nothing more.

For the first time since the last time he was in Hobart, Ponting was in some sort of Test match form. It seems odd to get excited about a player like him making back to back 50s, but he’s struggled for so long that I heard the phrase 'back to back 50s' almost as much as I heard Phil Hughes and slips mentioned in the same sentence. Not that these 50s were always that pretty. At the Wanderers he was worked over in the morning, and at the Gabba it was more about survival than elegance. But he was back, sort of.

That was before this horror half-shot, half-leave, half-walk shot and a half monstrosity. Not even Ponting’s biggest supporter, the Blundstone-wearing, mulleted Bellerive spectator in the blue singlet, could look at that shot and feel anything but a searing pain in their Ponting gland.

There was a time when comparing Ponting’s batting to a poorly acted, scripted and directed horror film that was made to cash in on the original far less dodgy film would have been sacrilegious. Those days are gone. This is the Ponting era of the back to back 50s, so when he plays the shot of a character in a horror film who won’t last long, it has to be mentioned.

Although, if you haven’t seen it, and are of a squeamish disposition, I suggest not watching the replay, or at least putting your kids to bed first.