If you bumped into Ricky Ponting last night, you would have had more chance of engaging him in conversation if you mentioned the form of his greyhounds, the weather, or even your interest in stick insects -- anything but cricket and the fighting century he scored at the Adelaide Oval.
It's not because the 31-year-old stormed off in a huff after being dismissed for 142, kicking up a dust storm and knocking over a plastic chair.
It's just that Ponting likes to leave the game and his deeds on the pitch. He may celebrate a century by finding his wife Rhianna if she is in the crowd and blowing a kiss or waving a bat, but when the doors are closed he says their time together is an escape from the game.
His mum Lorraine remembers a time when he was 13 or 14 when he came home from a day's play to their modest home in Rocherlea, said "hello" and asked what was for tea.
Mum asked him how he went that day, he said "OK" and tried to change the subject.
If it was any other boy you would suspect from such evasion that he had been dismissed for a duck or missed the cricket to have a beer behind the sheds, but young Ricky was different.
Mrs Ponting pushed for a straight answer and he reluctantly informed her that he had scored a modest 100 or so.
Such scores were routine, even at that age. In his first game as a 10-year-old he scored a fifty. A year later, playing against older boys in an under-13 carnival he scored three centuries in three games, all of them unbeaten.
Ponting has now compiled 33 Test centuries, more than any Australian batsmen after surpassing Steve Waugh yesterday.
It is only two less than Sachin Tendulkar, who holds the game's record, and is one behind Sunil Gavaskar and Brian Lara.
Ponting scores hundreds more often than any of the celebrated trio ahead of him.
Since the loss of the Ashes, Ponting is mining a seam of form rarely witnessed in the game. He has scored 10 centuries in his past 13 Tests and yesterday's was his seventh of the year.
He says, however, the statistics do not matter.
"I don't think about them at all to tell you the truth, I never have been one for stats," he said last night.
"I know a lot of other players will carry their stats around in their bags.
"I'm out there playing for the situation the best that I can for the team and hope to make a few runs along the way."
Hence the disgust at being removed when the job was not yet done. "We were just clawing our way back into the game," he said. "It was disappointing."
It was not that long ago when off-field indiscretions had people wondering if he was made of the right stuff for leadership. He was, they pointed out, a working class lad from the Mowbray cricket club. He had left for the mainland as a teen, never had a proper job and never finished school.
Statistics prove nothing but suggest, at the least, the sceptics were a little off the mark.
Ponting has excelled since succeeding Waugh as captain and averages over 70 with the bat in games where he has been asked to preside at the toss. Before taking on the responsibility, he was going at the humble rate of 56 runs an innings.
Ponting has proved himself to be a leader beyond expectation. There has been the odd scrap, but on the whole he leads his men and his country with a determined demeanour and sparkle in the eye.
While Tendulkar is still ahead in number of centuries, the Indian's career is on the wane. Ponting's greatest rival these days is a bearded chap from the Punjab once known as Yousuf Youhana, but now working under the title Mohammad Yousuf.
Ponting is, according to the ICC rankings, the No.1 batsman in the world, but the Pakistani is breathing heavily behind him and pressing.
Yousuf has been making a bold bid for supremacy but every time he scores a century Ponting clicks his heels and does the same, holding him a statistical arm's length away.
They have scored 10 centuries each in the past 15 Tests, with the Australian averaging 80 plus and the Pakistani 90.
This year Yousuf has set the record for number of centuries (nine) and most runs (1788) in a calendar year.
Yousuf has scored six centuries in his past six Tests, equalling a record set by Donald Bradman, himself a regular at the Adelaide Oval where Ponting batted so brilliantly yesterday.
While the captaincy has suited Ponting, it is a conversion to Islam that seems to have improved Yousuf's game. One can only imagine what a religious experience could do for the Tasmanian's game.
- PETER LALOR