What the hell is going on with Ricky Ponting?

This morning, I woke to news on BBC radio that Ponting will be retiring from international cricket when Austalia's world cup campaign ends. So I got online to find a news article or two about it and I could find only one, but I found a lot in which he denies there has been such retirement plans.

So, I sat down and wrote a piece in the form of a letter from Ponting to all of us, essentially saying "I'll go when I'm ready you fickle little ingrates". I didn't post it.

Then it came to me that it had been reported somewhere in Australia that CA want him to go after this campaign, whether he steps down or is fired, but that this should not have been made public. If this is true, it explains Ponting's sudden need to tone it all down by saying it isn't true. But if it isn't true, that also works.

As does that fact that CA are suddenly very vocal about backing Ponting, for example here and here. In the first of those two pieces, from the Indian express, CA says that the report only appeared in a British paper. And that makes sense - I saw it in the Daily Mail and heard it on the BBC radio, but it was nowhere else and when the radio news came round a second time over my morning coffee the story had disappeared.

So, basically, we're back where we have been for about a year now - Ponting might stay, he might not; Ponting might get sacked and many of the fickle fans, in the wake of the defeat to Pakistan, want that to happen. Today. When Pup screws up tomorrow and Ponting gets a century, they'll change their minds.

As Ponting himself said: ""It looks like every few weeks now I'm having to answer that question" and every few weeks we have to hear about it. Can we just play cricket, please?

And win.

Pretty, pretty please?

I'm willing to offer sexual favours.