The Hindu : Sport : Majority wants Ponting out

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Majority wants Ponting out

— Photo: AFP

Ricky Ponting.

Melbourne: Almost 60 per cent of respondents in an online poll have favoured sacking Australian skipper Ricky Ponting for his role in the racial abuse controversy during the second Test against India in Sydney.

Out of 54,435 votes that were counted online on Sydney Morning Herald website, only 27 per cent responded with a ‘no’ to the question ‘If it was right to sack Ponting for his role in the “Monkey Affair.”

“It was the ugliest performance by an Australian side for 20 years. The only surprising part of it is that the Indians have not already packed and gone home,” Roebuck said.

Ponting defiant

A defiant Australian skipper Ricky Ponting maintained that he did nothing wrong by reporting Harbhajan Singh for “racially abusing” Andrew Symonds and felt his Indian counterpart Anil Kumble had been unfair in his criticism of the host team’s lack of sportsmanship.

“It is a shame that this issue has come to dominate the Test because from my point of view I believe that overall both the Melbourne and Sydney Tests were played in terrific spirit.”

“This is not something we take lightly so it is surprising and disappointing to hear Anil Kumble suggest that we did not play within that spirit in Sydney,” Ponting wrote in his column for The Australian.

“I like Anil as a bloke and admire him as a cricketer and now captain. I have always felt he played his cricket in the right way, hard but fair. And I believe that is what we do, too.” — PTI

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