Richard Boock: The Dukes of Wellington

If Ricky Ponting ever wonders what life as a captain might have been like under different circumstances, he doesn't have to look far for his answer.

Once the Tassie larrikin, Ponting arrived in the country this week as arguably the most powerful player in the world; not only one of the game's most compelling batsmen, but also the skipper of one of the all-time great sides.

Just over a year into his new role, his transition from Lad to Leader has been a virtually seamless operation, to the extent that his New Zealand counterpart Stephen Fleming must occasionally wonder about the justice of it all.

Fleming, now an eight-year veteran as captain, received what was almost a poisoned chalice in 1997 following the collapse of the Glenn Turner regime, and took the best part of five years to find his feet.

Whereas Ponting managed to nudge out Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist for the test job last year, New Zealand's leadership stocks were non-existent in 1997, and Fleming was considered the best of a fairly lean range of options.

Now the pair, who have matched wits in the 50-over arena since 2002, are preparing to cross swords in the biggest ODI series since the World Cup, a five-match series between the game's No 1 and 2 ranked teams.

The prospect is an enthralling one for supporters, not just because of the likely calibre and quality of the cricket, but also because of the chance to assess the tactics of two of the game's most respected leaders.

Ricky Thomas Ponting was always destined for great things if you talk to Tasmanians and Australians with long memories.

Academy coach Rod Marsh reckoned he'd never seen a better teenaged batsman, and Ponting lived up to the billing, representing Tasmania as a 17-year-old and making his debut for Australia as a 20-year-old (scoring 96 before falling to a dodgy lbw decision).

Interestingly, a couple of years later Fleming would score 94 in his test debut against India.

Given the moniker 'Punter' for his racing and gambling penchant, Ponting was initially seen as anything but captaincy material and once owned up to a drinking problem - another interesting parallel given Fleming's pot-smoking scandal in South Africa.

Ponting was viewed as the heartbeat of the side, and when Ian Healy came to the end of the line a few years ago, he took over leading the team's victory song which was starting to be heard with ever-increasing frequency.

It hadn't always been like that though, and Ponting has often mentioned those dark days of the the previous era, when players such as Steve Waugh found themselves in Australian teams being beaten by the likes of New Zealand.

He is mindful too, that nothing lasts for ever, and that Australia cannot afford to take anything for granted about the future, lest they slip up like the present West Indian side.

But Ponting, one of three Australians along with Sir Donald Bradman and Greg Chappell to have scored four test double-centuries, has dismissed talk of a one-on-one battle with Fleming, saying the rivalry was largely irrelevant.

"I don't think you ever pit yourself against anybody," he says. "The way I approach the captaincy is based a lot on instinct, and controlling what I can at different parts of the game.

"All I can do is worry about the players I'm in control of and worry about my own game. I've got a lot of experienced players I can share ideas with."

The first man to lead a test team to five series wins in a calendar year, he said he received some good advice from Steve Waugh when he took over the reins, in terms of leading from the front and setting an example.

"One thing that Waugh impressed on me when he was leaving the job was to make sure I prepared myself as a batsman first, and to not worry too much about what the rest of team were doing."

Ponting wrote in one of his recent columns that when he first came into the job he said he wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible so anybody who was watching from afar wouldn't really notice that the leadership had changed.

"I've tried to be as honest as I can with all the guys and make it an open team," he said. "We have a forum when there are things up for discussion, and I get around to the guys and ask them different questions about how they think they're going and what they feel we should do.

"That's the way I handle it, though it probably wasn't always that way. "Tubby" [Mark Taylor] and "Tugga" [Steve Waugh] had different ways of doing it, but this seems to be working pretty well and it appears to be a happy team."

As for Fleming, his captaincy style was not so much shaped by the good work of former colleagues, as the dysfunctional situation in which he found himself as a young batsman in 1995-96.

That was the time when Turner and his like-minded manager Gren Alabaster ran a hard-line regime that seemed designed to purge the side of any dissenting voices.

Complicating the issue was the fact that Turner had appointed in Lee Germon a virtual puppet as the team captain, which Fleming said left no room for voices and opinions within the side to be heard.

Now New Zealand's most successful captain by a long street, Fleming watched as the side effectively imploded, leaving Turner, Alabaster and Germon on the outer, a raft of sacrificial lambs in its wake, and several players on the carpet.

The experience may have opened the door to the captaincy for Fleming, but it also left him with a profound sense of what was wrong with the previous operation, and how it need to be improved.

His most emphatic belief was that the autocratic style was limited, and that it would be far better to develop an environment in which the players were effectively self-sufficient and self-governed.

Under Fleming, players began taking on research tasks, analysing opponents, tactics, venues and trends and presenting their findings at team meetings in the days leading up to an international.

The spin-off was not only better information and preparation, but also the intangible advantage of encouraging all team members to take ownership of the side's destiny, and to feel pro-active and responsible.

The way Fleming saw it, his team-mates were carrying a wealth of information between them and might well come up with a suggestion that had escaped his calculations.

"It's interesting now after eight years in the job because sometimes people worry about how to keep making their mark after they've been in a leadership role for an extended period.

"Well, the answer is to turn everyone into leaders then there are more voices, more ideas and more resources."