16 July,2009 08:16 AM IST | | Khalid A-H Ansari
No saint himself and an ustaad in the dirty tricks department of gamesmanship, Ponting was understandably miffed at being denied what would have been a well-deserved, and crucial, win for his team.
The Aussie skipper condemned England's time-wasting tactics, which enabled the home side to eke out a desperate cliff-hanging draw, as "pretty ordinary", even as he failed to commend the last-wicket pair of James Anderson and Money Panesar for their valiant rescue act.
On the other hand, former England captain Nasser Hussain has termed England's sharp practice "amateur and embarrassing to watch".
Regular readers of KHALIDOSCOPE will recall this writer once described Hussain as Douglas Jardine (of Bodyline ill-fame) reincarnate, for his reprehensible unsporting tactics during the tour of India in 2001.
"It wasn't a street-wise move at all, it was village green stuff," Hussain wrote in his widely read column in London's Daily Mail newspaper.
"And it was bad for the game more like diving to win a penalty than delaying a throw-in".
Hussain, born in Madras (now Chennai) to an Indian father and English mother and raised in Essex, said the England team "needed to smarten up and not use tactics that make them or their sport look silly."
Coming down scathingly on England's questionable tactics, Nasser Hussain wrote: "Watching the 12th man run on with gloves, followed by a physio who wasn't needed because no one was injured, looked terrible and it didn't even waste much time.
"It didn't spoil a classic Test match but it did lead to a slightly farcical finish, which was a shame.
"If I were Ponting," Hussain continued, "I would have been pretty angry too, and would have told the physio to get off".
In a laughable case of the pot calling the kettle black, former England coach Duncan Fletcher has blasted Ponting saying: "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 his bowlers failed to complete the job."
During the 2005 Ashes series Ponting went ballistic over Fletcher's "unsporting" use of substitute fieldsman Gary Pratt who ran out the Australian captain.
The former England coach said England would have been "delighted to get under Ricky Ponting's skin" in the Cardiff Test.
However, Zimbabwe-born Fletcher admitted: "What England did at the end was ridiculously obvious. They might as well have held up a giant banner saying: 'We're time wasting'"
In other words, the gambit would not have been condemnable had it not been "(ridiculously) obvious".
Now if that isn't double standards, what is? Pathetic, Duncan.
