As I watch Ricky Ponting approach the end of his cricketing career it occurs to me that my life has been set down in stages according to who is the current Australian cricket captain. It certainly has tended to divide life into convenient chunks of 5 - 8 years or so. Far too many of them if I'm honest.
My first real cricket captain was Ian Chappell. Of course as a young nipper I was aware of Bill Lawry but Chappelli was the first captain i genuinely recognised as being an important part of my life. Still, I was too young to appreciate his genuine worth as a captain and I can only remember being desperately disappointed by his all too frequent modest scores as a batsman.
His brother and replacement captain Greg Chappell on the other hand, was God-like in his batting prowess, and I happily overlooked any shortcomings he had as a captain. His fluent, elegant technique was a joy to watch, and his prowess against both the English and the dominant West Indies brought joy to my teenage years.
Of course, Chappell's reign was interrupted and to a certain extent ruined by the eruption of Packer World Series cricket, and so we had brief periods of captaincy by Graham Yallop (who I quite liked) and Kim Hughes (who I didn't). But Greg was the man. Only much later did I find out what serious flaws he actually had as captain. Perhaps our heroes will always inevitably let us down, but I'm glad Greg's failings weren't apparent (at least to me) until well after his captaincy ended.
Following Greg of course was the ineffable Allan Border, perhaps my most favourite of captains. A great captain and a great batsman, he was rock solid and lacked the character flaws of both Chappell brothers. With neither the elegance of Greg nor the hard-headed insight of Ian, he was yet a brilliant batsman and a competent and respected skipper. Whenever Aussie cricketing backs were against the wall, you could always rely on AB to grind out a big innings to save the day. He did it again and again and virtually single-handedly re-built Australian cricketing pride.
That Border's reign coincided with my marriage, arrival of children and first significant move from my home town are not insignificant. Australia's 1989 triumphant Ashes tour of England remains one of my life's highlights. And while that tour was memorable for the coming of age of superstars and future captains in Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, it was Border's captaincy that made that series possible. I still vividly remember sitting alone in my new town of Adelaide, wife and kids yet to join me, and watching all night, mesmerised as Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh batted through the whole of day one of the fifth test. Glorious!
AB's reign lasted a whole decade, and it seemed somehow grotesque that it had to come to an end, but it did. I was unsure about the worthiness of his replacement, Mark Tubby Taylor, but then, who could replace AB? Taylor proved worthy but relatively short-lived, being at the helm for just 5 years. In some ways the opposite of Border, Taylor proved a lively and likeable captain paving the way for his replacement Steve Waugh, and cementing Australia's position as a leading test nation, whilst simultaneously I was cementing my own life firmly in my new home city of Adelaide.
Steve Waugh was a strange but aggressive captain and a powerful batsman who was even more capable of digging Australia out of trouble than had been Allan Border. Perhaps our most fluent and elegent batsman since Greg Chappell, Steve Waugh impressed everyone the world over with his skill and mental as well as physical toughness. With a fast-growing family of three rapidly growing boys, these were traits I needed and tried to emulate.
Then came Ricky Ponting. Never before had one so young and so talented been so obviously destined for the captaincy as young Ricky. Such precocious talent of course yielded a few ups and downs early on, but it was always inevitable that he would settle down to become one of Australia's finest batsmen and an undoubted, brilliant captain. That he was a fellow Tasmanian only made his reign doubly pleasurable for me.
However now his era is coming to an end, and as his star fades, so does Australia's as a cricketing nation. The gloss has gone, and as I enter the latter half of my life and begin to feel my age, it seems to me that the best of Aussie cricket has also been and gone, at least for a while.
Whoever takes over as captain will have an unenviable job. Following the Chappells, Border, Taylor, Waugh and Ponting is going to be one of the toughest challenges on Earth. I wish him well.
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