This is a single post from deeden.co.uk made during the period May 2002 to April 2009. During a previous grand redesign I decided to make a break with the past and consign the old entries to history. This entry is from August 2005 and lives here forevermore.

Dis a Ponting

I’ve been avidly listening to and watching the Ashes this summer although I haven’t mentioned it here. While the results so far have been great, and just what England needed, the best thing about the series has been the attitude and camaraderie between the teams. It started badly in the first test when the England players didn’t check on Langer after he was hit by a ball from Harmison. However from then on the teams behaved well towards each other, with the highlights being Warne congratulating Flintoff after his batting in the second test, Flintoff going up to Lee at the end of that test and commiserating with him after his wonderful performance and the Australians generally good-natured response to the ribbing of crowds.

With the generally friendly atmosphere of the series I feel disappointed with Ricky Pontings outbursts of the last couple of days. He was fined 75% of his match fee for apparently giving everyone a piece of his mind after being run out in the Trent Bridge test. He apologised for it afterwards and that should have been the end of the matter, but sadly he has now decided to continue complaining about it (amongst other things) on Australian Radio. He’s not happy about Englands policy of using substitutes for the bowlers and he may have a certain point. Sadly he has gone about dealing with it in the wrong way, complaining to everyone apart from the umpires and waiting until after he was out to do it. It looks like sour grapes and to be honest it probably is sour grapes. His policy of trying to play the “spirit of the game” is rather disingenuous coming from the captain of Australia who until very recently had probably the worst reputation amongst the Test nations for pushing the rules as far as they’ll go.

This Ashes series has been great. England are competing for a change and the Australians are having to deal with situations that they’ve become unused to. It has been enthralling and it’s sad to see Ponting let the other Australians down by complaining about things that would have England players called “whinging poms” if they were doing it on tour to Australia.