Defending Ricky

Ricky Ponting has had a a lot of bad press on the Ashes tour so far, and was even jeered during the Lord's Test. Gideon Haigh defends the Australian captain in the Times and says that Ponting remarks at the end of the Cardiff Test were the "acme of restraint" and terms his comments after the umpiring controversy in Lord's as "mild irritation on the spur of the moment, neither complaints nor excuses in the aftermath".

Lord's, meanwhile, which preens itself as the locus classicus of the spirit of cricket, actually boos the best Australia Test batsman since Bradman.

The irony is that if a single player in the world could be regarded as a cricket traditionalist, even a bit of a reactionary, it is Ponting. He is a Test cricketer to the marrow, obsessed enough with the Ashes to have forgone the riches of the Indian Premier League before this series, so dedicated to its symbolism that he attends Test press conferences in his whites and wearing his baggy green - unlike England players, who are studies in sponsor-friendly casual wear