'Destined for greatness': The making of a young Ricky Ponting

On a Wednesday morning in Mayfield, a northern suburb of Launceston, Mick Sellers is giving his body a brief rest from its daily toil. A week out from Christmas, the 72-year-old builder has his eye on getting one more slab down, and knocking over a few other bits and pieces, before he can put the tools away for the holidays. 

For Sellers, who has spent his entire life in this working-class neck of the woods, this is how it has always been. 

"I'm a builder, you see," he tells cricket.com.au. "That's what Ricky was going to do, back in the day. He done work experience with us for a week. He was a good little worker, but I said to him, 'You won't need to worry about this, mate'.

"He was only 15 then."

The days and months since have rolled into years, and the years into decades. Just last week, Sellers was reuniting with a collection of his old cricket mates to toast the 50th anniversary of Mowbray Cricket Club's 1974-75 premiership success.

It was indeed a golden summer for the club, though even the players couldn't have known then just how special it would prove to be. That December, six days out from Christmas, Lorraine and Graeme Ponting's first child, a boy they named Ricky Thomas, entered the world.

It wouldn't be long before he was riding his bike from Rocherlea to Invermay Park every Saturday to watch his old man and his teammates play cricket. Afterwards, as beers were passed around and postmortems proffered, young Ricky would absorb every word and deed from the working-class men of the area.

"You'd sit around and have a beer and a chat in those days," Sellers says. "He'd be always just sitting in there, soaking it all up. He was a very quiet boy, never said a lot. Then he'd get on his bike and ride home."

Now the kid is turning 50.  

"Jeez it goes quick, doesn't it?" says Sellers. "It goes real quick."

* * *

Retellings of the Ponting legend tend to begin with his four consecutive centuries as a mullet-sporting slip of a kid in an Under 13s tournament in Launceston. Almost 40 years on, Mowbray club legend Brad Jones – who was both coach and umpire through that carnival week – reveals there was actually a fifth. Although he also insists had Graeme Ponting had his way, this particular page in his son's legend would never have been written.

"I'm umpiring, Ricky's batting up the other end and I'm thinking, Bloody hell this is good," says Jones, who also notes with a grin that wicketkeeper Ponting completed five stumpings that week. "I mean, how many 13-year-olds hit the ball through midwicket off the back foot, and play shots through the covers? 

"So I'm more or less spectating, and one game he would've been say 60 not out, and Graeme came on the field. He said, 'Mate, bring him off – the other kids won't get a hit'. 

"I said, 'Mate, don't worry – I'll look after the other kids, he's fine'. 

"In my eyes, he was the one who really loved batting – so let him bat. And I was enjoying it too, so maybe I was a bit selfish (laughs).

"The next week, I picked him for the Under 16s as well, and he made a hundred first hit. Five in a row. They changed the rules after that – made kids retire at 30 or 40."

By then Ponting was already well established as part of the Mowbray CC furniture. Like his father and most of his cricket club heroes before him – including his uncle Greg Campbell, who would go on to play four Tests – he was an attendee at Brooks High School, but it was clear to all who knew him that his future lay outside academia. More impactful for Ponting was the local sporting culture he immersed himself in; soon enough, the traits of the Mowbray CC men became ingrained. 

"We were a hard sort of a club," Sellers says. "In those days, you could probably get away with a lot more. No-one liked playing Mowbray, because we were always, you know, a very strong club physically, and we played it hard as well. 

"(Ponting's) dad was like that, too. Just that working-class culture. They lived in housing commission homes, same as we all did in those days."

Danny Buckingham, a right-hander from Burnie who played for Tasmania through the 1980s, remembers the day he first laid eyes on the prodigy. 

"A lot of the time we used to do our state training on Sundays in 'Lonny' (Launceston)," Buckingham tells cricket.com.au. "'Punter' was 14 at the time and he was in the nets next to us. We're just watching this kid and thinking: Wow. 

"Watching him bat, you just knew he was going to bigger and better things. It was that obvious."

At Mowbray, club legend and former Tassie rep Richard Soule had noted the same ability, while he also recalls Ponting as an exceptional fielder in his early teens. 

"He played in the second grade grand final aged about 13 or 14, and his fielding that day was terrific," Soule says. "He debuted the next year in A Grade, and he took an amazing catch in his first-ever game – just a brilliant catch at point. That really stood out to me."

Word soon spread beyond Tasmania's north. According to cricket writer Malcolm Knox, Tasmanian cricket commentator Neville Oliver reportedly told a journalist from Hobart's Examiner newspaper: 'We've got a 14-year-old who's better than (David) Boon – but don't write anything about him yet, it's too much pressure'."

By that point, another local, the late Ian Young – father of former Tasmania player Shaun Young – had organised for Ponting a Kookaburra sponsorship. Around the same time, Jones remembers, there was a whisper doing the rounds that Young was looking to get the wunderkind across town to Mowbray's rivals, Old Scotch. Ponting though, was staunch in his refusal. According to Jones, Ponting told the news to his mum, Lorraine, before adding: "But I don't want to leave Mick (Sellers) and Brad."

"Of course 'Youngy' would want him," Jones smiles. "And Youngy was a terrific bloke. But Ricky had that loyalty in him."

Through his next 25 years of cricket, that sentiment never really changed. Even as he evolved as cricketer and person, became more refined off field and (usually) more measured on, the influence on Ponting of his working-class Mowbray idols never left him.

In the WACA gym in December 2012, after the final ball had been bowled in the last of his 560 internationals, he spoke about it in his farewell press conference.

"That's the place I learned the game, and the person I am was moulded from my background and my upbringing," he said. "What you've seen over 17 years is a result of my early days at the Mowbray Cricket Club."

* * *

Jones remembers standing alongside Sellers and watching Ponting's first nets session at Mowbray after his year spent in Adelaide, where, as a 17-year-old he was famously put through his paces by Rod Marsh at the National Cricket Academy. The two old mates were veterans by that point and they knew in their young charge they were witnessing the makings of something special. 

"He went away as a fantastic player, but as a rough diamond," Jones says. "When he came back, he was just so polished. I don't know what Marsh did with him. Every ball he hit was straight out of the middle. 

"Mick and I, we looked at each other and said, 'Wow! Fancy having this kid in club cricket for the next two or three years'. But then we said, 'No, he's not going to be playing for us! (laughs)'."

In one of his first innings back Ponting paired up with Mowbray captain Soule, who had by that stage played plenty of first-class cricket, and they put on a 233-run stand against rivals Riverside. 

"That was his first A Grade hundred, and he made it look easy," Soule says. "When I played for Tassie, I played against the late Martin Crowe. He was the best player I've ever played against – he just looked like he had so much time. And Ricky was exactly the same – so much time, he just made it look easy."

From down south, new Tasmania coach Greg Shipperd had been keeping tabs on the Launceston lad. A veteran opening batter from Western Australia, Shipperd had made the move from the mainland first as a player, and then 1991-92 he had jumped into his first head coach position. The former schoolteacher was a young coach prepared to hand young players an opportunity. In that '91-92 season he had given debuts to promising batters Dene Hills and Michael Di Venuto, and now he had his eye on Ponting. 

"When I saw him train and prepare in those very early days, there was already a super foundation of attack and defence," Shipperd recalls. "Tasmania, at the time, we'd sent both he and Michael Di Venuto off to Rod Marsh's Academy. 

"They used to play a lot of Second XI games against state sides and other Second XI sides. And I remember saying, 'As soon as those two score hundreds they'll be in the Tasmanian team next game'."

In the lead-up to the 1992-93 Sheffield Shield, Ponting hit not one but two hundreds for the Academy – 168no against Queensland Second XI, and 161no against South Australia Second XI. True to his word, Shipperd debuted the 17-year-old three weeks later, in Tasmania's opening Shield match against South Australia. 

"Adelaide Oval has got to be one of the best batting pitches on which to launch a career, so there is method in our madness," the young coach said at the time. "He's only 17 and that is early to be playing at first-class level, but we think he can handle it, and we'll just tell him to go out and be confident in his own ability."

Playing for South Australia in that match was another batting prodigy. Greg Blewett was three years Ponting's senior, and the two would go on to make their ODI debuts together in February 1995. In Adelaide during that Shield match, the young South Australian was immediately struck by his Tasmanian rival, who batted for almost three hours in compiling a first-innings 56.

"I'd heard a bit about him because he was at the Academy, but I'd never seen any vision of him," Blewett tells cricket.com.au. "When we played against him in that game, you could see the quality straight away. He made 50-odd and you just thought, Shit, he's got something.

"(SA fast bowler) Denis Hickey was playing in that game, and I remember 'Reg' (Hickey) going at 'Punter' verbally. Punter just gave it straight back, so it was like: OK, he's a little feisty bugger, too."

The first of Ponting's 116 hundreds came a couple of months later, when he took on a NSW side that included a couple of debutants named Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist at the SCG. Both Blues starlets had been at the Academy, so they were familiar faces for Ponting, who hit 125 amid an innings in which none of his teammates reached 35.

A month later he hit twin hundreds against Western Australia in Hobart, including a unbeaten second-innings 100 out of 190 that saved the match for Tasmania. At 18 years, 85 days old, he had broken the great Archie Jackson's record as the youngest player to score twin tons in a Shield match. It was a mark that had stood for almost 70 years, and still stands today.

"When he came into the team, he came with real self-belief," says Buckingham, who batted with him in that match. "He wasn't cocky, but he just believed in his own self-worth, and he backed his ability. 

"You'd watch from the other end and just marvel at him. The quicks are operating, you're struggling as all hell, and he's just doing it on a dime. It was embarrassing batting with him sometimes (laughs). He was only 18, but he was destined for greatness."

Ponting's rise paralleled that of Tasmania, who had been viewed more or less as easybeats since their 1977-78 entry into the Shield; in the eight seasons before his debut, the island state had collected the wooden spoon six times.

So it was with both excitement and trepidation that they approached their final-round fixture of the 1993-94 season in Adelaide against South Australia, knowing a win would see them through to a maiden Shield final. 

Ponting made 84no in the first innings and went to the middle second time around early on day four, with Tasmania 2-35 in pursuit of an improbable 366. South Australia, holding the whip hand, were eight wickets away from the final. 

"There was a lot of tension in the air, there were fellas under tables in the dressing room – they couldn't watch," Shipperd recalls. "It was a really momentous time for Tasmanian cricket."

Across the next four hours, the 19-year-old teamed up with opener Hills (126), the pair adding 290 in a match-winning partnership dominated by Ponting. When he was out for 161 from 222 deliveries, Tasmania needed just 41 to win and South Australia had exhausted all options, even utilising wicketkeeper Tim Nielsen's gentle off breaks for eight overs. 

"He was always the wunderkind," Nielsen tells cricket.com.au. "He was the kid coming through that people had their eye on for quite a while."

Nielsen had seen it first-hand as a 24-year-old scholarship coach at the Academy. He recalls Ponting's mischief-making ways alongside the likes of McGrath and Shane Warne; the little Launceston kid was, in Nielsen's view, the best player at the Academy, but he still had plenty of growing up to do, and was forever at the centre of the pranks and the jokes. 

"He was always running around doing stuff and then hiding behind the big fast bowlers to keep out of everyone's way, and then he'd piss himself laughing," he grins. "And then he'd go into the indoor nets, pull and hook his way through his half hour bat, and walk out of there."

Tasmania were thrashed by NSW in their maiden Shield final and Ponting added little to his side's cause, but by the end of his second season he had already made six Shield hundreds. 

"And most of those hundreds were match influencing," Shipperd adds. "I'd seen good young players coming through the WA system in Graeme Wood and Geoff Marsh, who both had terrific careers. Mike Veletta was another one – a young kid who danced down the wicket and took the game on. 

"But I'd never seen anyone who was so commanding.

"He was one of the ones who set that foundation and competitive belief that the Tasmanian players, and the system itself, were craving.

Before he turned 20 that December, Ponting had sailed past 2,000 first-class runs and was averaging 52. Two months later, he would be taking his first steps in green and gold. 

It was the beginning of the most successful international career in cricket history.

* * *

Brad Jones was there at Lord's in 2005 when Ponting was struck a savage blow by Steve Harmison on the opening day of a classic series. Ponting wore the blood like a badge of honour. From the stands, the old Mowbray boys grinned at the theatre unfolding, knowing their favourite son wouldn't take a backward step. 

They were there at the Pontings' wedding in Sydney, too, rubbing shoulders with Gilly and Warnie. Back at the hotel afterward, they sat and drank beers from the keg Ricky had organised. Despite the occasion, the groom sat with them late into the night, much like he had in the Mowbray sheds all those years ago. 

"His missus kept coming down, but he wouldn't leave," laughs Jones. "That's the sort of scallywag he was at times, old Rick."

Before and since that night, Ponting's wife Rianna has been credited as a valuable influence, helping to transition the young 'scallywag' – who in 1999 admitted to having an issue with alcohol after the infamous Bourbon & Beefsteak incident – into a respected senior figure of the game, as his dad Graeme noted in 2006 after Ricky's 100th Test.

"He has (changed) in the last four or five years, just in himself," he told The Sydney Morning Herald. "Once he met Rianna he took on responsibility and he's a completely different person. He did go off the rails there for a little while, everyone knows that.

"Meeting Rianna and settling down like he has done has been the be-all and end-all. You either go one way or the other way, don't you, when things like that happen. Luckily he met her and went the right way."

Even then the Mowbray crew remained a touchpoint; a valued human reminder not to waste the gifts that had taken him to places far beyond his working-class roots.

"There was a bit of a time where he got himself into some trouble," Jones says. "And there were a few times where we just reminded him how far he could go. You know: 'Do you realise how good you are?'"

The runs and the records he piled on thereafter have filled volumes of cricket books, and so too have the World Cups and Test series triumphs. Ponting remains the only player to win 100 Tests, a particular feather in his cap he has said means as much to him as any other statistical achievement. That winning mentality is another aspect of his personality that hails back to his upbringing. 

"It was a very, very competitive nature at Mowbray Cricket Club," Jones adds. "And you can see that in (Ponting), can't you? I mean, he'd be spewing if he lost a game of marbles."

As a coach as well as a mentor, Shipperd has been there through the rise and rise of his most special talent, from larrikin to leader to legend and more. 

"Like all young players, when they're growing up, they have their scallywag moments, but we've all had them," he says. "But he's matured into a cricketing statesman, and I'm extremely proud of him for all of his achievements. 

"He was always very capable in terms of knowledge of the game, and a lot of that foundation is born in the dressing rooms of Mowbray Cricket Club, and good on them for their interaction of young people and older people in the game. 

"But through all his cricket experiences – and he played an enormous amount of international cricket – he kept learning. I think maybe in the early days, a lot of the knowledge was there but he didn't know how to express it.

"Now as a commentator, with all his experience, he's actually able to take the listeners or the viewers on the strategic journey of the game, and how it's likely to unfold. He's a priceless part of the media in that sense."

Blewett still sees that fire in his old Australian teammate whenever they connect for a round of golf. Since his retirement, the sport appears the preferred competitive outlet for Ponting – a man who said a few years back he still regularly has dreams that he has made a cricket comeback, and has been picked once again for the national side. 

"We haven't played together for a while, but if we're both on our games, it's pretty tight between us," Blewett says. "He's actually gone with a long putter now. His ball striking has always been very good, but there's always been a little thing with his putting – but he reckons now he's gone with the long putter he's knocking them in from everywhere, so he might be dangerous."

It sounds very Pontingesque. At 50, as he begins the back nine of his life, he is still striving to improve, still searching for a way to give himself every chance to be a winner.