The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Ponting proud of his mates

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Ponting proud of his mates

Special Correspondent

Kuala Lumpur: Australian skipper Ricky Ponting said he was proud of his teammates for the way they had fought back to win the final league game of the DLF Cup and set up the title clash with West Indies.

"I'm proud of the way we won today. I'm proud of everyone for what they did. To win a game like that where we didn't play at our best can give us a lot of confidence," said Ponting.

When did he scent victory? "I thought we were actually in the game for a fair bit of it. Though we hadn't gotten the runs on the board, we got four wickets quite early and if you looked at their team, you could realise they had a fairly long tail with Ajit batting where he was, and Harbhajan after him. When we got four down, we just needed another couple during the middle of the innings."

Ponting also gave his side of events following umpire Mark Benson calling Sachin Tendulkar back. "The umpire made his decision. Then he reversed. Then I think he actually got it right in the end. I can't talk about umpiring decisions much anyway. He explained the reasoning why. I wasn't that happy at that time, but it was the umpire's decision.

"I didn't approach him, he called me over. He called me in to explain why he had changed his decision. And I didn't actually see Sachin being called back, I was in the middle of a group with the guys and Mark was calling me over to explain it."

Brett Lee, who Ponting called the best one-day bowler in the world, said, "It's a lovely compliment. You've obviously got to put that back on Ricky's captaincy as well. He's put that confidence in me. Hopefully I can repay some of it."

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