Cricket World Cup: Gambler you don't bet against

SOMETIME DURING the World Cup some poor sucker of a batsman will decide to chance a quick single after hitting the ball in Ricky Ponting's direction. It will almost certainly be a costly and messy mistake.

Bails will fly as a bat is thrust forward forlornly towards the crease, the third umpire will be called on but only as a matter of protocol, and the red light will eventually flicker.

It will probably be a matter of millimetres in the end, but it might as well be the length of the Tasman Sea. Another wicket will have fallen to the unerring arm, poise and balance of the boy from Launceston. The likelihood, if Australia progress in the tournament, is that this scene and its inevitable upshot, an entry in the scorebook which reads "run out (Ponting)", will be re-enacted more than once.

The sight will never be less than thrilling but it will always beg the question of why. Why do they do it, knowing the potential consequences? Ponting's nickname is Punter, because of his fondness for a bet, but attempting to snatch a run to him is the the sort of wager that would persuade a man it was time to enrol in Gamblers' Anonymous.

"The idea is to stop batsmen scoring runs, cut off their supply, make it difficult for them," said Ponting of his predatory role in the one- day game, usually at cover in the early overs of an innings but thereafter in the exacting area at backward point. "Then they get into a position where they feel they've got to score to get runs on the board and are prepared to take a risk. You squeeze them into doing it first, make it a hostile environment where they've got to escape from the pressure, especially towards the end of the game."

That, then, is the reason that batsmen continue to jeopardise their immediate futures. Backward point is a natural place to hit the ball in the one- day game if the bowlers have got their line right. Open face or closed face, that is where the ball frequently has to end up.

Ponting, 24, has become one of two best (and noisiest) limited overs backward points around and it makes him quite simply a leading all-rounder. He has scored more than 2,500 one-day runs at slightly under 40 and it seems unfair in a game which thrives on statistics that no official record is maintained of his run-outs. Lots, and probably to become plenty.

Comparisons with South Africa's panther, Jonty Rhodes, are natural and it is not to diminish the prowess of Rhodes to suggest that his effectiveness is slightly muted because he does not have Ponting's inspired ability to know the whereabouts of the stumps and almost uncanny ability to hit them. "We're actually different in our approaches," Ponting said. "Jonty stands a little bit deeper than me. It gives him just a bit more time and he has this tremendous ability to read where the ball's going and make vast amounts of ground. I suppose I try to close the batsman down, just be a bit more threatening."

This is not, it has to be said, perhaps the only difference between the two. Jonty is a devout Christian of quiet pleasures, Ricky owns greyhounds and has been known to take a drink or two. Back in the winter the Tasmanian was banned for three one-day matches after a late-night, or rather early- morning, incident in a Sydney bar that left him with a black eye. But he is as an approachable and open fellow who candidly admits his 24-year- old failings. He still likes a drink (and didn't Keith Miller and Denis Compton?) "but only after matches".

His exploits, indeed, have made him more of an endearing figure back at home. When he was suspended there was widespread sympathy, and the young followers of the game identify with him. While he confessed to having something of an alcohol problem it has not affected his game and he is usually a reserved, self-contained character. It could be said that the game needs more of him, not less.

His fielding returns in the past three months alone have been enormously beneficial to Australia. It was in the triangular one-day series against England and Sri Lanka in the winter that Ponting confirmed his reputation. At Perth, he was wrong-footed when Marvan Atapattu tried to scamper through but, off balance and forced to contort his body, he produced a swift, precise throw.

A couple of matches later Vince Wells was in the course of pulling England round and was on 39 when he backed up at the bowler's end. It was a bad move, for Ponting at point saw it and when the ball came his way swivelled and threw. Wells could not make the three yards back. In West Indies last month, Ponting accounted for Jimmy Adams and Carl Hooper in the same innings at the striker's end.

"I was thinking about this the other day and I honestly worked out that of all the chances I've had in one-day cricket I've only missed the stumps four or five times," he said. "You've got to be quick and be able to throw but I practise every day. We all train with throwing at the stumps but I have a little, private game of my own where I have somebody hitting it to me as if I'm at point and have one stump to aim at. If I can hit twice out of 10 times I'm happy."

The tension of a big one-day match probably increases his chances of hitting at either end. He has put in all the rehearsal and when the curtain is up for real his attention is heightened. It seems crazy now that Australia could once contemplate putting him anywhere other than in the fielding circle. But they did.

"When I first came into the side I was out on the boundary. I was the new young boy, quick and with a decent throw. When Steve Waugh took over and I was a bit more established I suppose I've been in the circle right through matches."

Australia have had a constantly busy winter. Ponting has been with them all the way, through the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia, the mini-World Cup in Bangladesh, the Test and one-day series in Pakistan, the Ashes and the triangular series at home and the Test rubber and one-day series in West Indies.

"If this was just another one-day tournament I suppose we'd be tired," he admitted. "But it's not, it's the World Cup and we know in seven weeks' time we can go home for some time off." Seven weeks and counting the suckers.