Four years is a long time in the life of a sportsman. Olympic athletes spend that length of time working towards their one moment of immortality. French footballers do the same, only backwards. And thanks in no small part to the spacing between Ashes tours, England cricket captains tend not to last much beyond four years either.

But when Ricky Ponting leads his side onto the Sydney Cricket Ground this Friday, his last four years will seem the longest of all. The Carlton and United Series of 1998-99 - the last time Australia, Sri Lanka and England all met in a tournament Down Under - was one of the most fractious cricketing encounters of recent years. And Ponting was right in the thick of things.

Unlike England and Sri Lanka's players, Ponting at least had the decency to keep his scuffles off the pitch. But when he was paraded in front of the cameras, sporting a black eye courtesy of a nightclub "encounter", it marked a watershed in his professional life. Ponting was served with a three-match ban, and promised to seek help after admitting to a drink problem. He has certainly been true to his word. Ponting is now the heir apparent of the Test captaincy as well, and completed his transformation by marrying earlier in the year. Since then, he has scored four first-innings hundreds in six Tests.

Back in 1998-99, however, the one-day captaincy belonged to another - as yet unreformed - nightprowler. It had been a frustrating season for Shane Warne. Injury had prevented him from taking part in the Ashes series until the very last match at Sydney - and even then he had been outbowled, 12 wickets to two, by his understudy Stuart MacGill. But then Steve Waugh pulled out with a hamstring injury, and Warne had centre stage at last. He duly astonished his critics with a deft display of captaincy, inspiring Australia to seven wins in a row after a stuttering start to the campaign.

With the ball, Warne was still feeling his way back after his shoulder injury, but typically he still pulled off the defining moment of the tournament. In the first final at Sydney, England were cruising to victory on 198 for 4 chasing 233, when Warne baited Nasser Hussain into a rash charge down the pitch. Hussain was stumped for 58, and England lost their last six wickets for 24 runs.

Earlier in the tournament - at Melbourne - Warne's unheralded diplomatic skills were called upon, when the notorious occupants of Bay 13 began pelting England's outfielders with billiard balls. At Alec Stewart's behest, Warne came onto the pitch to reason with the crowd, and he defused a tricky situation by borrowing Waugh's helmet in a light-hearted gesture.

There had been further audience participation in the previous match at Sydney, when Muttiah Muralitharan was greeted with taunts of "no-ball" each time he ran in to bowl. Murali, who had been called for throwing by Darrell Hair on his first tour of Australia, was in the spotlight throughout the series. And never more so than against England at Adelaide, when all hell broke loose ...

Almanack Report

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd