Ponting hopes Murali will tour Australia

Ricky Ponting hopes Muttiah Muralitharan will tour Australian later this month. Murali said he was considering pulling out of the tour following comments about his action reportedly made by John Howard, the Australian prime minister.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Ponting as saying, "I'd love to see him here and I'm sure the Australian public would love to see him here as well. He's a fantastic player and opponent and he's a great competitor. He's the current Test record-holder and it'd be nice to have him and Shane Warne playing in the same Test series against each other again. Let's hope he tours. It would be a great challenge for us if he does, because he's a very, very good bowler. I'm looking forward to that showdown once again."

Ponting disagreed with Shane Warne's comments about Murali being over-sensitive to criticism, and said, "Look, he's been around for a long time and had a lot of things said about him over a long period of time. I guess any of us put in that situation, it would start to wear you down. There's no doubt that it's probably starting to affect him more over the last couple of years than it did before that. I'm not going to tell anyone the way they should react to things. All I can say is hopefully he'll tour Australia."