The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Ponting issues warning to England

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 21, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Ponting issues warning to England

By Our Special Correspondent

BIRMINGHAM, SEPT. 20. Australia captain Ricky Ponting issued a warning to England on the eve of the Champions Trophy semifinal here by highlighting the strong points of his team.

"We come into a lot of tournaments as favourites and we have our own standards of how we want to play the game in every tournament we play and that's how we pay attention to making sure we're doing everything we can to stay ahead of everybody else," Ponting said.

Elaborating on the strength of his side, Ponting said: "I think some of our players are improving all the time and have come a long way. (Andrew) Symonds has gone from strength to strength. (Michael) Kasprowicz wasn't in the World Cup squad and has done extremely well. We have a good side that is never happy with what we've achieved and I think it shows with the way we train and prepare ourselves. "

Assessing the opposition, Ponting said: "England has done a lot of good things over the last 12 months on both forms of the game. We've performed well against England over a long period of time in one-day cricket. There's a really good feel around the team at the moment and we're looking forward to the challenge"

Asked to comment on Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff, the Australia captain said: "He's (Vaughan) a very good player. Michael has struggled a bit in one-day cricket a bit recently and if we bowl well to him early on when he first comes to the crease that will continue. Flintoff'sbatting in the one-day game has been outstanding. We've got one or two things we might try against him tomorrow."

England captain Michael Vaughan conceded that Australia would be the "hot, hot favourite'' on Tuesday. "They have more experience and go into the game as hot, hot favourites. I guess the pressure is off us and on them to come out and beat us convincingly. They have a good bowling attack and have had it for years and that makes our challenge much more exciting,'' he said.

When reminded that England had lost the last 14 matches to Australia, Vaughan said: "We're certainly not going into the game thinking of those 14 defeats. We're thinking of the performances over the past few years. Not many of our team was involved in those 14 defeats so there's nothing we can control in that aspect. It's a special game, a semifinal.''

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