1) The early years

One shot, that was all it took. Or so the story goes. Ricky Ponting arrived at the Australian Cricket Academy when he was 16, his local cricket association having stumped up A$1,000 to pay for him to get from Launceston to Adelaide. Rod Marsh was in charge, and by way of a welcome he stuck Ponting in the nets against a 6ft 6in quick called Paul Wilson, a 20-year-old who was trying to talk Marsh into giving him a place at the academy. Wilson's first ball was a bouncer, which Ponting pulled away in front of square. "This bloke," Marsh said, "will play for Australia."

Ponting was a seriously talented teenager. He needed to be, because he had some serious handicaps to overcome, like his taste for up-country mullets and ludicrous beard-and-moustache combinations. He made his first-class debut when he was 17, and scored his first century six games later, making 125 out of a total of 292 against New South Wales. Some bloke called McGrath took five for 79. Back then Ponting was rangy and whippet-thin, a little like one of the greyhounds he loves so much.

The audacity of his strokes off the back foot still take the breath away, his bat moving so quickly that it was a blur till it came to a stop somewhere up behind his head at the end of his follow-through. Ponting made his Test debut for Australia in late in 1995, against Sri Lanka. He almost got out for a golden duck. Muttiah Muralitharan bowled him his very first ball, and Ponting skipped down the pitch and tried to drive, but edged it through the slips and away for four. He ended up making 96, but ended up on the wrong side of a ropey lbw decision.

As polished as his play was, the man himself had a larrikin streak. He lost the rough edges in 1999, when he was banned for three matches after getting into a fight with a bouncer. "I was punched in the face," he said afterwards, his black eye just about concealing his blush, "and that's basically all I can remember from the whole evening." It was only after that when his average began to creep above the low 40s. "I wish Ricky had realised how good he could be earlier in his career," Marsh said, "when he was averaging a mere 40." But then he was a hard taskmaster, Marsh. "I'm disappointed he's only averaging 60 in Test cricket: he's better than that." AB

2) The batsman

"He's given it out! Out! Ricky Ponting is out! It's impossible to know what to say." Mark Nicholas's spine-bothering commentary came in the most extreme circumstances, during the coronary-inducement denouement at Old Trafford in 2005, yet it hinted at a wider point. For much of the 2000s, Ponting's omnipotence was such that his wicket was the major event of a day's play.

When Ponting made 142 against England at Adelaide in 2006 he became the only man in Test history to average more than 60 after 100 or more games. It's testament to his capacity to score huge runs over a prolonged period of time. Even for the great players, purple patches tend to last a series or a season; Ponting could extend them well over a year, such was his remorseless, almost inhuman consistency. When Ponting was at his best, bowlers did not bowl to him in hope, never mind expectation.

Two periods stand out. The first came during 2002 and 2003, when Ponting visibly went from very good to great: he scored 2,567 runs at 82.48 with a murderous fifties-to-hundreds conversion rate of 65%. His form dipped a little when he inherited the Test captaincy from Steve Waugh; then, in the 15 months that England held the Ashes in 2005 and 2006, Ponting played with terrifying purpose as he sought to retrieve what belonged to him and his country.

This time he scored 2007 runs at 83.62, including 10 centuries – six of them in only three Tests. Only one man, Sunil Gavaskar, has ever scored two hundreds in the same Test on three occasions during an entire career. Ponting did it three times in five months. When we consider that, and all his other achievements, it's almost impossible to know what to say. RS

3) The all-rounder

I could sit here straining my brains to try and do justice to Ricky Ponting's fielding. But really, when Richie Benaud reckons that "this is one of the great catches you will see", what more do you need to know?

Ponting has taken more catches than any other player in the history of Test cricket bar Rahul Dravid, and while he's not famous for his fielding in the way that Mark Waugh and Jonty Rhodes were, over the years he has done things that, as Benaud says, are as spectacular as anything the sport has seen. This one, off Graeme Smith, is almost as good, and this one, to remove Jamie How, might even be better. The thing is, Punter could do it in more positions than exist in the Kama Sutra. He could do it at point, he could do it in the deep, he could do it at midwicket and, best of all, he could do it at short leg ("He's done it again," Benaud says. "Would you believe it?").

Then there were the run outs, like these gems to remove Geraint Jones and Marvan Atapattu. Robelinda, the lunatic responsible for most of his YouTube Punter-porn, has even uploaded a compilation that he says includes every run out Ponting ever made in international cricket. It is an hour long. No, really. Ponting's run-out highlights reel is pretty much as long as Aftab Habib's entire Test career.

And he could bowl, too. Filth, mainly, but that only made it all the funnier when it worked. Brian Lara was the pick of the wickets, but he must have enjoyed having Michael Vaughan and Arjuna Ranatunga caught behind too. AB

There has been a tendency to put most of the great modern batsmen in one of two categories: the blessed ones and the cussed ones, those who were born great and those who achieved greatness. It's a bit of an oversimplification, if not without merit. Ricky Ponting was right in the middle of that Venn diagram, both golden boy and grizzled streetfighter. He had the natural talent to play astonishing shots like this but could also will his way to runs, as he did in the 2011 World Cup quarter-final.

That fusion of qualities was reflected in his signature pull and hook strokes. Ponting's instinct and talent were evident in the hand-eye co-ordination, judgment of length, timing and reaction speed. But, in playing the most physically dangerous shot in the coaching manual, he was also asserting his masculinity and strength of will. You and me, pal, let's do this. It was a thrilling and decisive reversal of the normal relationship between the chin musician and his subject. He was the most intimidating puller since Viv Richards. Clear 18 minutes of your lunch hour for this wonderful Robelinda video of Ponting doing what he did best.

Ponting put his own spin – or, rather, his own swivel – on the pull shot with that inimitable, graceful movement into the ball, and the range he had within one basic shot made him like a programmable boundary-pulling machine. You could vary the length of the ball (anywhere from thigh to face height), the part of the boundary he would hit (long leg to midwicket, even mid-on occasionally), the arc of the ball (Ponting could go up and over or spank devastating flat sixes) and the speed of the bowler.

It looked and sounded best at home, the whipcrack off the bat before the ball disappeared into one those huge outfields. Towards the end of his career, as his powers waned, the pull became a bit of weakness. It was the cruellest way of informing Ponting of his own sporting mortality. Yet it will always be the shot that defines him. RS

5) The innings

Ponting gave his Australian team a new motto before the 2003 World Cup. It was, he explained afterwards, "intent and intimidate", which doesn't actually make much sense. But then when you bat like Ponting did, grammar doesn't matter all that much, people soon got his gist.

Sourav Ganguly put Australia in to bat in the 2003 final, a decision Wisden reckons was "born out of fear of Australia's bowlers". As if their batsmen were any less scary. Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist put on 105 from the first 14 overs, which allowed Ponting the luxury of a little time to play himself in.

He took 74 balls to score his first 50 runs, and only hit a single, solitary four in that time. And then, rousing from his slumber in the 39th over, he launched the most extraordinary assault, kick-starting things by striding down the wicket and launching a six over midwicket off Harbhajan Singh.

Ponting made 90 off the next 47 balls, a streak that included eight sixes, all through the leg-side, and took 10 runs off the last two balls of the innings. "It was," reckoned Greg Chappell, "the most compelling, destructive cricket performance I have ever seen."

Australia finished with 359. India were bowled out for 234. As much as Ponting's credentials as a Test captain were called into question as his career wore on, he led the single most successful ODI team in history. Under him, Australia won 26 World Cup matches in a row, winning every game they played in both 2003 and 2007. AB

6) The human being

He smiled. Ricky Ponting had just become the first Australian captain to lose an Ashes series since 1986-87 and, when Mike Atherton interviewed him on the podium at The Oval, his weary face broke into an amiable, boyish half-smile. Ponting had become a pantomime villain (cliché bingo, but it's true) earlier in the series, when he misplaced his rag after being run out by Gary Pratt, and would retain that status for the rest of his career. He was booed by some English crowds – a gesture that was at best ill-judged banter and at worse a complete disgrace – and lost it again during the 2010-11 Ashes, this time when Kevin Pietersen was given not out at Melbourne.

There is a danger that, in England, Ponting will be remembered for those indiscretions. At times he crossed the line with umpires, yet there seems an unusual inclination to dwell only on Ponting's imperfections; to punish him for his humanity. In reality it isn't noteworthy that Ponting cracked twice during Tests against England; it's noteworthy that he only cracked twice. Consider the level of pressure he was under. He would be remembered as the man who lost the Ashes – not once but thrice – and who presided over Australia's fall from grace and greatness, even though those failures were almost entirely beyond his control, a simple case of nature taking its course. Imagine how you and me and everyone we know would have coped under such pressure. Day after day there wouldn't have been a toy left in the pram, and we'd have quit in tears within weeks.

For 99.94% of the time Ponting conducted himself with humour, decency, dignity and fairness . His interviews after surrendering the Ashes, particularly in 2005 , were wonderful demonstrations of his enormous generosity of spirit. Ponting adored the Baggy Green, but he adored cricket even more. Some might conclude that this generosity was simply a case of Ponting the politician saying the right things. Except he could not play that game. He could not and he did not want to. It would betray who he was. In the increasingly disingenuous world of modern sport, the words coming out of Ponting's mouth were ones you could trust. He showed it again with his brutally candid explanation of his retirement. That speech also reminded us that Ponting is a much underrated orator, all piercing honesty and pithy eloquence.

One thing he couldn't do was write his own scripts. The generosity with which the gods treat the greats was not always extended to Ponting. There were umpteen wonderful days punching the air or belting out Under The Southern Cross, of course, but Ponting's career was a compromised fairytale, with plenty of dark moments. "I've given cricket my all, it's been my life for 20 years," he said earlier this week. "There's not much more I can give it." Cricket has been good to Ponting, and at times it has been downright sadistic. Yet he never stopped loving it. RS