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The Australian: Giant man on a road less travelled [January 07, 2006]

The Australian's Mike Coward spoke to Vincent van der Bijl, one of the forgotten legends of South African cricket, at the Sydney Test this week. Van der Bijl is part of the South African official party on this tour.

Ricky Ponting's historic match-winning century at the SCG yesterday made the front page of all today's local papers, as the collage below demonstrates.

Reuters photographer David Gray captured Ponting's moment of ecstacy after scoring the winning boundary. Competing broadsheets The Weekend Australian (top left, owned by News Ltd) and the Sydney Morning Herald (bottom right, owned by John Fairfax and Sons) displayed their intense rivalry by publishing the exact same shot.

Have we just witnessed Ricky Ponting's finest hour (to date)?

That was a bold declaration by Graeme Smith this morning, but full credit to him for doing it and keeping the match alive. South African captains and sporting declarations usually come in the same breath as leather jackets and personal cash bonuses, so infrequently have they occurred.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good statistic. It's Ricky Ponting's 99th Test against teams not called the "ICC World XI", but that doesn't devalue a great century that looks as if it will save Australia from a tricky situation against South Africa.

Currently 4/206 needing another 46 to avoid the follow-on, with the real Dickie Knee lookalike Andrew Symonds at the other end.

I was disappointed to see so little attention given on December 20, 2005 to the centenary of the birth of one of Australia's finest cricketers of all time. For many, Bill O'Reilly was Australia's best slow bowler before (and maybe even including) Shane Warne.

It all makes sense, you know...

• Makhaya Ntini injured his knee during the Second Test at Melbourne
• An injured knee is known as a "dicky knee"
• Dickie Knee was a puppet on the 1990s Channel Nine variety program "Hey Hey It's Saturday"
• The voice of Dickie Knee was played by prominent Melbourne radio identity John Blackman
• Shane Warne called Makhaya Ntini "John Blackman" because he was batting with a dicky knee.

Shane, you may be, as you told the world in 1998, "naive and stupid", but we're not. Even if that is all there is to the remark, how utterly dopey was it to use the word "Blackman" to a black South African opponent in any context?

Warne should have been disciplined for disrepute for the sheer insensivity of the remark, and it reflects poorly on all those in the Australian camp who condoned it.

Anyway, take a look at this article in the Sunday Herald Sun for a startling revelation about the real Dickie Knee.

Time to catch up on a few items over the past couple of weeks that I haven't mentioned previously over the next three posts:

Firstly, the annual Australia versus the Bombers six-a-side cricket match at Windy Hill on December 22. For two years running we have seen the Australian cricket team play the Essendon Football Club (that's Australian Rules to all you association football pedants) at cricket, and guess what, the Australian team is yet to win!

It was great to see Ashwell Prince bring up that century at the SCG yesterday, if only to see a South African with personality do so well...

The partnership of 219 for the fourth wicket between Prince and Kallis, though a little slow by contemporary Test standards, has put South Africa in the box seat for this game, and let's face it, it's healthy for the sport any time Australia is made to struggle these days.

Watching Shane Warne bowl to Prince yesterday gave me this perverse image of the same bowler with a slightly plumper girth and longer blond hair being smashed around by Ravi Shastri on this same ground fourteen years ago, almost to the day.

On the morning of Day Three, the start of play (at the absurdly early TV-driven hour of 10am) has been delayed. It's gloomy and overcast in Sydney and barely drizzling. Goodness, if this were Old Trafford or Headingley they'd be saying conditions are ideal for cricket!