Sitting on a high table with one-and-a-half black eyes, vowing to stay away from beer, Ricky Ponting had looked like an unfortunate caricature of our times in his first public appearance after a drunken brawl at the Bourbon & Beefsteak nightclub in Sydney’s infamous King’s Cross area in 1999.

A year before that, he had been fined for alleged ‘bad behaviour’ at Equinox, a pub in Kolkata, after Australia had suffered their biggest Test defeat in 60 years. The 34-year-old Australian captain has come a long way from there. Last month in Cardiff, he made news for the most benign of reasons — a late evening, incognito run to pick up some groceries and comfort snacks.

The simplest of batsmen, Ponting, the man, has his fair share of complications. There was very little he did wrong in the first Ashes Test last week — a big century, picking Hilfenhaus ahead of Clark, sticking with Hauritz despite warnings from the spinner’s numerous detractors. But he still came off appearing ungracious, a bit of a whiner, after the match ended in a draw.

His outburst against England’s obvious time-wasting tactics in the final moments of the opening match on Sunday may have sparked a debate about the ‘spirit of the game’, but it also gave the impression that the Australian skipper was suggesting he was ‘owed a victory’ going into the second Test. By trying too hard to be one of the boys in victory, or being too tactless in defeat, Ponting often lets the occasion get to his head, and the opposition under his skin.

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