Ricky Ponting turned up at the SCG in a suit and tie, armed with
ideas from seven years as Australian captain and expecting to
spend the whole day imparting them to Don Argus and his panel.
''I was in there for less than an hour,'' Ponting recalled this
week. ''I called James [Cricket Australia boss James Sutherland]
outside and said, 'That's not the way it should be.' They didn't
want to hear what I had to say, and I think some decisions had
already been made … There were certain people in the room who
knew that I'd asked for things a long time ago, things I wanted
implemented around the team that they didn't want spoken about
in that forum.''  One of the greatest batsmen of his generation
sat in the boardroom of his manager's Port Melbourne office this
week, 10 months into his retirement, and talked in his no-
nonsense way about some of the things he couldn't discuss openly
during his career. Many of them, including his meeting with the
Argus panel, are covered in his autobiography, At the Close of
Play.  T