Ponting: Australian behaviour is tarnishing the game

Ricky Ponting has admitted that Australia can let themselves down with their behaviour in the field, and the game of cricket has been tarnished as a result. Ponting, who captained Australia's one-day team to victory in the World Cup, but who returns to the ranks for the first Test against Bangladesh on Friday, said they would be anxious to avoid any heated verbal exchanges in the coming series.

Australia's most recent Test, against West Indies in Antigua, was a fractious encounter. West Indies won in a grandstand finish, chasing a world-record 418 for victory, but the match was marred by a fiery exchange between Glenn McGrath and Ramnaresh Sarwan. In the previous Test, Brian Lara had got involved with several Australians, most notably the captain Steve Waugh.

"There are things that happen on the field that we are not happy with all the time," Ponting told reporters on Wednesday. "Obviously, the last tour was tarnished by one of those incidents. But we've spoken about it and we speak about it before every series and every tour that we go on. Let's just hope that those things don't pop up again this time."

Australia's behaviour was criticised by the head of their own board. James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia, had phoned Waugh in Antigua to express his disappointment at what he had seen.