Wikipedia:Peer review/Early life of Ricky Ponting/archive1

Early life of Ricky Ponting
This peer review discussion has been closed. I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to take this article to FAC early next year. Did you know that Ricky Ponting is Australia's leading international cricket run-scorer?  Aaroncrick  ( talk )  Review me! 07:15, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This seems complete, as far as I (an outsider to the sport) can tell. However, it includes a lot of jargon that outsiders are sure to find mysterious. I think the cure (wikilinks and brief explanations) will not be too difficult. Where a longer explanation of the scoring or rules might be helpful, you might add it in the form of a footnote. I did some minor c/e as I went. Here are some other specific suggestions.

Image
 * The image needs alt text, meant for readers who can't see the image. WP:ALT has details.
 * It seems a bit odd to use a photo of Ponting at age 35 since this is about Ponting only to age 20.

Lead
 * The combination "35-year-old" in the image caption needs two hyphens. In the first paragraph of the lede, you have 14-year-old, which is correct, but "16 year-old", which needs the second hyphen. Ditto for any similar instances in the article.
 * Dates like "15 February, 1995", which appears in the lede, don't take a comma.
 * "after completing year 10" - Is "Year Ten" a formal name? The linked article suggests that it might be a formal name (proper noun) that must appear as "Year Ten" rather than "year 10".
 * "Ponting received a bat sponsorship with Kookaburra Sport" - Wikilink Kookaburra Sport here on first use?
 * "he became the youngest Tasmanian to score a first-class century" - Jargon. "First-class century" should be linked or briefly explained here rather than later in the article. Ditto for "twin centuries".
 * "Ponting made his ODI debut a" - Spell out or explain ODI. If it refers to One Day International in the first sentence, it should be abbreviated as well as spelled out there. Then ODI will make sense on subsequent uses.

Birth
 * "lived in Prospect 4.1 km (2.5 mi) south of the city centre" - Generally the primary units of a measurement are spelled out. In this case, "km" should be "kilometres". I like to use the convert template for conversions partly because it gets the spelling and abbreviations right; e.g., 4.1 km.

Junior ranks
 * "On the Monday, he struggled to trouble the scorers... " - Perhaps "first day" would be better than "Monday" since the day of the week seems irrelevant. Then perhaps use "second day" for Tuesday, and so on? Also, "struggled to trouble the scorers" seems slangy. Perhaps just "struggled to score" or "did not score" would be more straightforward.
 * "mainly on the back of the four centuries" - Slang.
 * "from what we had been told it would be in conditions like we has never experienced before." - Did he really say "we has never experienced before", or did he say "had"?
 * "We were all excited with the prospect if taking on the South Africans... " - Did he say "if taking" or "of taking"?

Early Australian domestic career
 * "he strode out to the crease at number four against South Australia" - This will be mysterious to a reader who does not know cricket. What does "crease" mean"? What does "number four" refer to? I think these should be linked or briefly explained.
 * "At the end of the first day's play, Tasmania were 6/200... ". - Someone unfamiliar with cricket scoring will not know how to interpret "6/200".
 * "having endured three rain breaks and 54 minutes in the nineties" - What does "the nineties" refer to here?
 * "Ponting stroked 17 boundaries... " - What are boundaries? What does it mean to "stroke a boundary"?
 * "the nation's fastest wicket" - What is the meaning of "fast wicket"?
 * "there's talk in the papers that I'm a chance go on an Australian tour if England... ". - Did he say "if England" or "of England"? Also, the quote needs quotation marks at the end.
 * "He finished the tour second highest in the aggregates behind Langer." - What does "aggregates" refer to?
 * "Set 366 in 102 overs..." - What does "set 366" refer to?
 * "When Tasmania played Western Australia at Bellerive Oval on November 4, 1994... " - The triple dates need to be formatted consistently in the main text. You used d-m-y in the lede, so this should be "4 November 1994".
 * "Ponting was 117 not out at stumps" - What is the meaning of "at stumps"?
 * "against Western Australia-Sir Donald Bradman is the only other batsman... " - Semicolon rather than hyphen.

Notes
 * The citation date formatting should be consistent. Citation 26 has a mixture of d-m-y and yyyy-mm-dd. In this case, I'd probably just flip the d-m-y because the others in the citations seem to all be yyyy-mm-dd.
 * Is correct I think, does it automatically because of the work and publisher fields are used.  Aaroncrick  ( talk )   06:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

References
 * I'd flip the authors' names to last name first and then arrange the two entries alphabetically. Also, I'd add the place of publication for each book.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:23, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks.  Aaroncrick  ( talk )   06:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments from
 * You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
 * Better to put your References in last name first order in the individual references, and then alphabetize by last name, since you use the last name in the notes.
 * Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 14:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)