Surely now, Ricky Ponting’s glittering career is over.

Overnight, he was dismissed for another duck in the first innings of the second test against the Proteas in South Africa. His second duck of the series couldn’t have come at at worse time as Australia went from 0-174 to all out for 296, which is only 30 runs better than the South Africans.

Ponting has much been in decline since 2008, and during his last 42 innings, has only made one test century.
He says that he his happy with his form and he still has some good cricket in him. I’m sorry Ricky, but if you don’t show some of this ‘good cricket’ soon, you’ll be back in the Tasmanian Sheffield Shield team.

The 2008 Captains Diary that Ponting wrote mentions that he wants to finsh his career with ‘stuff left in the tank.’ Well Ricky, just like when you run out of petrol in a car, you can’t tell yourself, you have the petrol gauge to tell you. We, the fans and the media are the petrol gauge. The red light is flashing and the sounds are beeping. The tank is close, if not, empty.

Saying this however, Ponting did make the correct decision in giving up the captaincy. It’s probably something that would have put Steve Waugh under less scrutiny towards the tail end of his career. Clearly though, retiring from the Twenty/20 form of the game didn’t really help him.

This time, there will be no Waugh-esce fairytale send off. If he really wants this, he has to do the team thing and go back to Tasmania and find some form, however with the fomer skipper turning 37 next month I find it unlikely that he will do this; or he has to retire.

There are no other options, if he continues in this form, he is risking how people will see his career. Take Waugh for example. He was in terrible form, made a century in the Sydney test match and thats all she wrote (although he did continue on for almost another year after that).

With the new selectors coming in (thank god Hilditch is out), Ponting will found himself out as soon as this test series in South Africa ends.

What are your thoughts?