Cricket tips / Ralph Ellis / 16 November 2011 / Leave a comment Bet Now View Market

As the end of Ricky Ponting's test cricket career looks like it might be coming to a close, love him or hate him, Ralph Ellis hopes the ex-captain does the baggy green proud when Australia meet South Africa in the second test.

Despite many earlier highlights, Ricky Ponting may well be remembered for the significant recent downs in his career than anything else.

It shouldn't happen. He's played 154 Tests and scored nearly 12,500 runs. He was captain of Australia during the period when they dominated the world. And yet somehow he'll always be remembered as the skipper who lost the Ashes in England not once but twice - and then - even worse in Aussie eyes, lost them again back on home soil.

And my word, how his abrasive, arrogant attitude made him a man English fans loved to see fail. The more he spat his dummy out when things went against him, the greater the delight. The YouTube clip of him getting run out by substitute Gary Pratt at Trent Bridge in 2005 has got nearly 200,000 hits and rising! There's the same number watched and re-watched Freddie Flintoff throwing his wicket down four years later too.

And yet . . . I'd love to see 'Punter' make some runs when Australia play South Africa in the Second Test on Thursday. Because it looks like whatever happens, it will be curtains for his Test career afterwards, and a great player should go out with a bang and not a whimper.

Ponting made eight and nought in the first Test, each time a victim to new seam bowler Vernon Philander, whose eight for 78 gave him the best figures by a debutant in the 20 years since South Africa returned to Test cricket. He has a Test average of just 18.84 since the start of the last Ashes series, and has not scored a century since making 209 against Pakistan in Hobart in January 2009. Back home even respected, old school commentators like Richie Benaud are saying that he's reaching the end of the road.

The Aussies have John Inverarity taking over as new selectors' chairman once this series has finished, and spin legend Benaud says: "Ricky's situation is that the new chairman might have to tell him: 'Listen it might be time to put the cue in the rack'. You don't want to see a bloke with his record force the selectors to drop him."

Ponting won't want that either, and that's why I fancy him for one last big score this week. Newlands might have been a wild pitch that saw 23 wickets fall in a day, but the Wanderers Ground where the second Test takes place is normally much more of a batting strip. And, after the humiliation of getting skittled out for just 47, you can expect Ponting and current skipper Michael Clarke, to demand better batting standards.
All of which makes backing Australia at [3.6] to get the win that would level this very short series tempting. At 36 there should be a few years left in Ponting's time at the top, but if he's got to go it would be fitting if he does it with one final flourish. He's [4.8] to top-score for Australia in the first innings.

Five things you might not know about Vernon Philander

1.Born June 1985 in the tough Cape Province area of Ravensmead, he was 14 when he was first picked for the first team of the local Tygerberg Cricket Club

2.Local snobbery that favoured private school pupils meant he couldn't get into the Province Under 15 team, and Tygerberg's coach Hannes Adams used to drive him two hours to the other side of town for extra coaching. It paid off as Philander ended up as captain of South Africa's schools team.

3.His first experience of playing in England was in 2004 when he spent a season with Devon - and starred in a shock C&G win over Leicestershire

4.In January 2007 he was the victim of an armed robbery while he was eating at a fast food joint with several Cape Cobras team mates. He had a gun pushed in his face during the hold up.

5.He has Irish ancestry and was lined up to play for them before getting a stress fracture. Ironically he then made his One Day International debut against Ireland on his 22nd birthday.