Ponting can’t lecture us about fairplay

Well that's rich, remarks former England cricket coach Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian; Ricky Ponting trying to "lecture" Andrew Strauss about playing to the "spirit" of the game. "If any side in the world doesn't play within the spirit of the game it's Ponting's Australians, yet here he is sitting in judgment on England because he's frustrated that his bowlers failed to complete the job. Ponting getting frustrated - does that remind you of anything?"

(Fletcher is referring to the finger-jabbing incident during the Fourth Test at Trent Bridge in the 2005 Ashes series when Ponting berated the England coach for having a specialist fielder on as 12th Man - a specialist fielder who had just run the Australian captain out.)

While Fletcher is critical of the decision by the current set-up in the national team to engage in a little gamesmanship - "I should make it clear that I don't condone what England did but had I been coach, I wouldn't have let it happen" - he is realistic enough about how little bearing this had on the game as a whole.

"Let's not get carried away. What England did ate up maybe an over at most. If the batsmen had wasted the same amount of time talking between overs, no one would have batted an eyelid. Instead we're left with the ridiculous situation of being told off by an Australian captain for transgressing cricket's spirit – a notion he seems to only vaguely understand himself."

Setting out his view of fairplay, Fletcher says that his "feeling about the spirit of the game is that the players have gone too far if what they are doing sets a bad example to schoolboys watching at home. But can the Australians really argue that England's tactics are worse than the way Ponting places pressure on the umpires and makes them look bad in front of a huge crowd and TV audience? And we haven't even mentioned Australia's sledging."

Ponting's reaction "after Aleem Dar rightly turned down a catch at silly point off Paul Collingwood was typical. Back in 2005 the Australian captain and his team were over-aggressive towards the umpires on a regular basis, and he was at it again here. Ponting has to be careful. Someone needs to sit down and ask him what he understands by the spirit of the game. The way he plays is definitely not in the spirit."

And had the boot been on the other foot, with the Aussies looking to save the game? Well, "Australians would have you think that they'd have done things differently on Sunday evening" but if that's true "then pigs might soon be spotted in the skies above St John's Wood." ·