The end of Ponting?

Overall, Clarke has met the challenge. Certainly, he has displayed the ability to think on his feet that eludes his predecessor. He set astute fields and tried to attack. He demonstrated his faith in Mitchell Johnson by giving him the new ball and made Michael Beer feel at home. Both responded. At last, too, Clarke instructed a paceman to go around the wicket to Strauss, a tactic that has often worked.

But if it was praise for Clarke it was also indeed a thrusting of the knife into Ponting. The virtues of Clarke, Warne made himself clear, were the vices of the man who now seems likely to be supplanted by a batsman of talent, who is currently at sea when he walks to the wicket and whose disapproval ratings would scarcely be higher if he was the leading suspect in a serial murder hunt.

And then there is Ricky Ponting, forced to stand down from the Australian captaincy because of his finger injury, now doubtful of ever returning to the role. It wasn’t the story that fascinated me, it was the fact that Ponting is 36. Thirty-six? The man looks 50. Careworn and crumpled, he is hardly a good advertisement for the benefits of the active life. Yet it is also extraordinary that people are seriously contemplating that this unforeseen event may mark the end not only of his captaincy but of his entire Test career.