When India arrived in Australia in mid-December, they believed — with good reason — that Ricky Ponting would be their greatest stumbling block on this tour. Two months on, the Australian skipper is a man troubled, his alarming lean trot gnawing at him and taking away much of the cockiness he parades when on top of his game.
The Tasmanian's only innings of note thus far has been an uncharacteristically dour century in the final Adelaide Test, under artificial pressure created by India's massive total on a placid surface. Atypical as that knock was, it was full of character and determination; apart from a poor run, he also had to battle physical pain as a lower back injury flared up, a battle he won hands down if not with great flair and authority.

Apart from that 140 at the Adelaide Oval, Ponting's also made 55 in the first innings of the Sydney Test, a gift from umpire Mark Benson who adjudged him not out as he glanced Sourav Ganguly into the 'keeper's gloves when still 17. With the Australian summer coming to an end, Ponting has nothing else to show since the start of the Test series against India, abysmal returns from a batsman who lorded over world cricket for more than four years.
A combination of events has undoubtedly colluded to leave Ponting in unfamiliar terrain. First, it was the old bogey of Harbhajan Singh that spun a wicked web around him; then, Ishant Sharma decided he quite fancied the Aussie skipper's scalp himself. Between times, there was the small matter of the Harbhajan-Andrew Symonds face-off and its unpleasant fall-out that has, it is obvious, taken a huge toll of Ponting's mental reserves.
In the immediacy of the original three-Test ban imposed by Mike Procter on Harbhajan, Ponting was taken apart by his then disenchanted countrymen. His standing as skipper was openly questioned by a sizeable many, and such was the torrent of abuse his parents had to endure that they were even forced to change their telephone number. Ponting wasn't amused at the stance Cricket Australia adopted in the subsequent appeals hearing by Justice John Hansen, who overturned the ban on Harbhajan and instead slapped him with a 50 percent match-fee fine.

Things didn't end there. While Hansen's decision returned a lot of the sympathy — public opinion can indeed be fickle! — towards Ponting and Symonds, the Aussies had a new problem to contend with in the form of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

It is no secret anymore that, taken in by the lure of the IPL lucre, Australia's cricketers have been averse for a while now to tour Pakistan next month, ostensibly because of security reasons. Cricket Australia's desperate and unacceptable desire to protect the interests of its sponsors didn't go down too well with the players, who sensed that their opportunity of making a quick, big buck could be stymied by the stubbornness of the game's governing body in the country. Ponting fired the first public salvo against CA on the IPL issue in Sydney a fortnight back, thundering that the players' association would have something to say if CA's unjustified thinking stood in the way of the players signing their IPL contracts.

Ponting, of course, wasn't speaking merely for himself, but on behalf of a majority of his team-mates who have since signed up with the IPL and been bought by respective franchises after Wednesday's auction. Hopefully, now that all outstanding issues have been favourably resolved, Ponting will make his peace. After all, not since Harbhajan reduced an undercooked Ponting to a blubbering wreck on Australia's tour of India in 2001 has the 33-year-old looked so vulnerable and out of sorts with a bat in hand.

Having salvaged a disastrous Test series with that disciplined hundred in Adelaide, Ponting would have hoped to kick on in the triangular series. Instead, five innings have yielded just 53 runs at under 11, his highest score 25 against Sri Lanka in Perth last week.

As disappointing as the returns have been his mode of dismissals. The first four of his five innings ended with catches to slip; against India, he pushed forward with hard hands and was undone by bounce and away movement, while against the Lankans, he perished to identical chop-steers off the back foot, again unable to cope with additional bounce after committing himself to the stroke. Personally, Sunday's outing at the Adelaide Oval brought him little joy, except that his run of outs at slip ended! Again, the bounce was what did him as he tamely half-drove, half-cut to point after an unconvincing 10.

Such is the nature of the one-day game, and especially in a competition of this nature that involves games at rapid frequency and the attendant travel that can drain you mentally and physically, that there is little time to go back to the drawing board and work things out. So much has transpired so soon, and placed so many demands on Ponting the captain and the cricketer, that it is no surprise that his primary role — as a run-making machine, so to say — has suffered badly. It may not be a bad idea, given Australia are comfortably through to the finals, for Ponting to perhaps take a mini break, get away from the pressures of constant scrutiny and come back with his batteries recharged.

Of course, you can't score runs sitting out, and such is the nervous energy Ponting has always possessed that he is probably averse to the idea of stepping back, however temporarily. Ponting at his awesome best is a majestic sight, an amalgam of grace and power, of style and substance. For much of this Australian summer, the Punter has laid the wrong bets. Somewhere down the line, his luck has to change. When it does, someone will suffer. Very badly, you suspect.