The Ponting-Lee exchange
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
AFP
Ricky Ponting gave all his other bowlers, even Michael Hussey, a spell before turning to Brett Lee on the fourth day in Mohali. Cameron White even got a second. Lee wasn't pleased and was seen exchanging words with his captain. Here's what the Australian papers had to say about it.
It was not until Hussey was introduced and White was summoned for a second spell that Lee cried enough. By chance his captain was fielding a few yards away and Lee took the chance to remind him that he was fit, eager and had in his time claimed a few scalps - more than the rest put together, as a matter of fact, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Lee knew how much a raw attack depended on him. He had bowled badly in 2005 and Australia had lost the Ashes. But since Glenn McGrath's retirement he has given the team its cutting edge. Strong, fast and resourceful, he had taken numerous wickets and commanded universal respect. Alas, his bowling had deserted him in India. He had bowled without conviction, plan or accuracy. Everything was broken, it seemed, except his cricketing heart. And now that was under strain ...
... Ponting made one mistake, a fact he must have recognised the instant Lee's grizzles reached his ears. He had not put an arm around his struggling strike force to explain his thoughts. It was an understandable oversight. A captain arrives at a ground with 50 matters on his mind. Something is liable to get missed.
Showing a very public lack of faith in his struggling spearhead, Ponting refused to bowl Lee during the morning session on the fourth day, prompting a prolonged protest from the fast bowler and an animated response from his captain, writes Malcolm Conn in the Australian.
When White claimed the wicket of Gambhir caught at mid-off, Ponting tried to talk to Lee in the team huddle that gathered around catcher Hussey. But Lee kept walking away from Ponting in scenes reminiscent of the clash between then captain Allan Border and his fast bowler Craig McDermott during a county match on the 1993 Ashes tour. On that occasion Border yelled after his paceman: “Don’t walk away from me or you’ll be on the next plane home.”
Jon Pierik gives his take on the incident in the Herald Sun, where he writes that Ponting's emotions spill over a little too often.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo