Release the Bats: How I freed Ricky's Kahuna from captivity

PL on his favourite bit of furniture

The graffitied Kahuna

Every house should have a cricket bat or two lying around. Sometimes you even need a broader strategy. I visited a friend at his new girlfriend’s apartment a while back and was amused to see he’d parked one of his bats leaning against a loungeroom wall. Some of us leave behind a toothbrush, a jacket, or an earring, but old mate marked his territory with a rather nice piece of willow and one that was not out of place amid her stylish furnishings.

Shadow batting is methadone for the addicted. Something to scratch the itch. It’s not just Marnus and Steve up late at night in their rooms playing shots at imaginary deliveries. A wooden spoon or hallway umbrella is an unsatisfactory substitute for getting your hands around the grip, hearing that knock, knock, knock on the kitchen floor, pressing into that forward defence, holding the pose, contemplating the constancy of the shot.

It is some measure of my financial circumstances at the time, but more of an indication of how much attention I paid to batting that I never actually owned one when I played cricket. I’d use anything I found in the club kit, or grab the nearest stick and head out with it before its owner realised. Nobody seemed to mind. I was never gone that long. Batting was, as I told my senior captain after he’d sent me in to open on a wet pitch, not my job. I was a bowler happy to give it a heave ho if the situation allowed, or dig in should things be grim. I wasn’t brave. Or any good.

These days I am the proud owner of a Ricky Ponting Kahuna.

And it’s not just any Ricky Ponting Kahuna, this Ricky Ponting Kahuna was used by Ricky Ponting when he scored 123 against India in Bengaluru. The only century the champion Australian batter scored in a Test match on the subcontinent. India was Punter’s weak spot. He struggled early in his career there, but found his feet later, scoring four half-centuries in his last seven innings, but it was not a happy place for one of the best batsmen of his generation.

Ponting put on 155 with opener Simon Katich in the match after Australia had lost Matthew Hayden cheaply in the first innings of the Bengaluru game. The innings meant a good deal to the Tasmanian, who wrote about it in his autobiography Ponting: at the close of play.

It wasn’t a pretty innings but under the circumstances - made on a slow deck in my first big game back from wrist surgery, with all the pre-match animosity simmering away and with Harbhajan bowling plenty of overs - it remains one of my favourites. I’m not a goal-setter and revenge is not a motive that works well for me, but I did want to show that I could bat well on Indian pitches and I still hated the manner in which they’d got their way over the racial abuse charge. I had a point to prove to a few people, including myself. When I reached three figures I was very excited and it showed in my celebration, one of the most animated of my career.

Ricky raises the bat in Bengaluru

Five years later, Ponting’s publisher called me in to add a few bits to the autobiography before it was due to be sent to the printer. The retiring legend and I talked as much as we could, but it wasn’t always easy as he was called away to fulfil his contractual duties with the Antigua Hawksbill franchise in the Caribbean Premier League. It was hectic, but we got there, and when the book was published, Ponting sent over the autographed bat out of appreciation. He also agreed that we would be able to crack the bottles of wine that commemorated the Bengaluru century, but thus far we’ve never got around to it. Cricket Australia gifted Ricky a bottle of Grange Hermitage for each of the 41 Test centuries he made, the vintage matching the year of the innings, when he retired.

There was one problem, however. The bat, with a handwritten note and autograph on the face of the blade, had been mounted inside one of those frames you see most sports memorabilia presented in, so they can go straight into the pool room. A trophy and not a functioning object. It looked pretty cool, but I have to admit that it was frustrating that I couldn’t get my hands on the grip, couldn’t feel the weight, couldn’t play a few imaginary shots.