Ponny, the run-making machine © Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

In case you took Don Bradman out of the equation, who would be the greatest batsman cricket has known? One walk into the MCG and you can’t miss the veneration accorded to Bill Ponsford, a phenomenal run-making machine in his own right.

The statue of Ponsford outside Gate 1 captures the man: he’s finished with the shot, bat in one hand and taking off for the run. It’s almost as if the sculptor is saying: there was never a doubt he could score, let’s show everyone what came after.

‘Ponny’ burst onto the Test arena with a century on debut and finished in an even more sensational manner, ending with 181 and 266 in his farewell. Nobody has managed two first-class quadruple centuries and nobody before him had amassed 1000 runs in a domestic season. One of his streaks of five innings produced a phenomenal 1146 runs. Here was Australia’s original don.

At the MCG for the first two days of the Test was Megan, his grand-daughter. She beams when asked about the Ponsford stand, full of pride at having known the “gentle” man who it’s named after. “He was so quiet,” she says looking into the horizon, “never one to talk about his achievements. In fact he didn’t talk much cricket at all.

“A lot of his contemporaries used to talk about how good he was but the current generation had hardly heard of him. In fact, it was only after the statue came up [in 2005] that a lot of people asked me, ‘Are you related to this guy? You share his surname.’ So that way the stand and the statue has revived his memory.”

Megan, who is currently working on a documentary on the first Australian side to tour India [in 1935], is big on cricket history. “I am particularly interested in the social stories connected to cricket and the 1935 tour makes such a fascinating study.”