Chris Gayle is Also a Supporter of Anti-Ponting World of Cricket

Australia's tour of India has showcased in several different ways Ponting's maturity as a captain and the fact he is the powerful voice the game needs to try to preserve its fading traditions.

First his on-field deeds. It's one thing winning when you have Glenn McGrath bowling from one end and Shane Warne from the other.

It's quite another when you have five players sent home from a tour and have to wheel out not simply all of your reserves, but the Clint McKays as well.

Spinner Nathan Hauritz seemed like a rookie two months ago. Now he is a senior player.

But it has been Ponting's fight to preserve the lustre of playing for Australia that has been even more impressive than his effort at the helm of a vessel with more holes than the Titanic.

I love the quotes from Ponting (see article Page 63) where he stridently criticised the attitude of young players who have been seduced by Twenty20 riches and are not as obsessed about representing his country as he is.

"I've made no secret that I'm a bit worried about some of the attitudes of younger players with the amount of money that's around in Champions League and IPL," he said.

If you privately gave some young players the right of reply they would say "it's OK for Punter . . . he makes $5 million a year. We have to look at how we can get by if we don't become superstars".

That is a fair point but the game has always been about more than money for Ponting.

When, as a youngster, he landed one of his first sponsorship deals with a Tasmanian bakery he redirected a $10,000 cheque to his club at Mowbray so they could pay for a new clubhouse.

The big worry for Ponting is that young players can get big Twenty20 money before they play for Australia and it will throw their lives and their priorities out of kilter.

Players think they have made it before they have made it.

Representatives of Dave Warner's club side in Sydney have talked among themselves about the need to try to make sure he keeps his feet firmly planted on the ground after his Twenty20 success.

There have been signs several young T20 stars are getting ahead of themselves.

It is a great thing for cricket that Ponting is fighting for the game's traditions – but it will prove an unwinnable fight.

West Indian cricket captain Chris Gayle is the anti-Ponting.

While Ponting has retired from Twenty20 cricket to extend his Test career, Gayle is close to doing the opposite.

It breaks my heart to admit it but Ponting is the dinosaur here. Gayle's way will be the way of the future.

Twenty20 cricket is becoming the focus of the old and the young.

Even in the nets Academy coaches say that footwork in the old-fashioned sense is a dying art. Young players want to learn set-up positions where they can stand and slog.

Rookies are inspired not so much by the deeds of Ponting and Shane Warne – great champions who are almost untouchably good – but novices like Moises Henriques who can earn a $400,000 contract with the Indian Premier League (IPL) despite being a modest performer for their states.

It is what you might call the Stefan syndrome.

Hairdresser Stefan's television commercials did not contain glamour girls.

He used women next door, knowing millions of other women next door would be suitably inspired by someone they could compare favourably to rather than some superstar they felt was out of their league.

The big worry for Test cricket is that it has not got enough big time voices fighting for it including the biggest voice of all – India.

India has produced some exceptional players but it has not got a memorable history of Test cricket full of sweet memories.

It is happy to look forward rather than back and T20 is its shiny new gem. Players are becoming quite shameless about their split loyalties.

During the first season of the IPL, Gayle sent England's Kevin Pietersen a text saying "man, you should be here $$$$$$$$$".

Gayle loves the big bucks.

He relishes the effort-to-earnings ratio of Twenty20 cricket to the point where he stayed on with his IPL team, the Kolkata Knight Riders, as long as he possibly could this year. He arrived in England only two days before the West Indies' first Test against the home nation.

As captain of the team it was almost laughably poor form.

When he got there he gave a media interview about his waning interest in Test cricket and saying he would not be "so sad " if it died.

It was a bad day for the game which only makes players like Ponting more special . . . even if he does finish on the losing side.