The eminent cricketer turned cricket writer Peter Roebuck in tomorrow’s Melbourne Age:
“Ricky Ponting must be sacked as captain of the Australian cricket team.
“If Cricket Australia cares a fig for the tattered reputation of our national team in our national sport, it will not for a moment longer tolerate the sort of arrogant and abrasive conduct seen from the captain and his senior players in the past few days. 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.
“Ponting has shown not the slightest interest in the wellbeing of the game, not the slightest sign of diplomatic skill, not a single mark of respect for his accomplished and widely admired opponents. In the past few days, the Australian captain has presided over a performance that dragged the game into the pits. He turned a group of professional cricketers into a pack of wild dogs. As much can be told from the conduct of his closest allies in the team.
“He has not provided the leadership expected from an Australian cricket captain and must be sacked.”
Read the full column: Ponting must be sacked
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WHAT THE POLLS ARE SAYING
Melbourne Age: 77% say Australians are bad sports.
Sydney Morning Herald: 41% say Aussies can dish it out, but can’t take it.
The Australian: 46% say all contentious decisions must be made by third umpires.
New Zealand Herald: 67% say Australians’ win-at-all-costs’ approach irritates them immensely.
The Australians are played hard before also, but never stoop this low. Peter is right …it is time to sack Ponting to set example, other wise he will become like his look alike…aka Bush.
Churumuri: Why are you not quoting what Indian newspaper polls are saying? How long will you carry whitemen’s burden, Sir?
Instead of cashing on the Australian media and commentators sympathy, BCCI is going for an overdrive which would see these sympathies melting away!
I respect Peter Roebuck , the ex-Captain of Somerset County and a first class honours Law graduate from Cambridge. But he is an Englishman ( born to SA parents), look for Australians like O’keefe.
See all firangi papers are harping only Harbhajan’s alleged racial abuse but almost nothing about those wrong decisions and unfair playing by the Aussies!
I wonder if any of Ponting’s critics have ever played sport at the level it is today. Has beens and journalists who sit on the sidelines, probably jealous and frustrated with their own pathetic lives.
I totally admire Ponting for standing by his team mate (remember loyalty), and I find it totally offensive that Indian people call Australians monkeys. If a white person were to call an Indian a monkey they would probably squeal like pigs, and fully exploit the race card. Bottom line is Australia is winning, India are losers.
This fellow Ponting not only looks like a 5 year old, but also behaves like one!
Why is winning so important when it is actually a sport and if you are not going to use sportsmanship in sport then what good is the word sportsmanship?
Alan a Rabid Nationalists, yes and such is life, we have to live with them too.
I am an Indian, and Indians are bad losers. Look at their track record in Olympics hockey contest? They squeeled injustice when their team fails to deliver? Since when Indian cricket team were winners? When Nari Contractor was hit by Griffith in Barbados test, they squeeled, complained he was a chucker, but no other cricketer was hurt like that why? Contractor ducked when he should have hit the bouncing ball which was not high enough for ducking.
In Perth Aussies will bring in Tait and Indians will squeal again.
Indians may have prima donnas in the their team, but as a team they are failures in Cricket and in Olympics.
Roebuck is a constant “Aussie basher” (and he likes to cane young boys on the buttocks too!)
No one in Australia takes him seriously. He only moved here because no one in England was taking him seriously.
Maybe he’s now looking for a job in India?
Take him, you’ll be sick of him pretty soon, when he starts ‘caning’ your team too.
He’s what’s known as an under-achieving malcontent. Calling for Ponting to be sacked is ridiculous and he is copping a lot of flack for that article, and rightly so.
This whole matter was blown out of proportion – largely due to the reaction of the Indian captain and the Indian journalists.
Australians push the boundaries, there is no doubt about that, but Kumble and the journalists did not behave like gentlemen either.
Gentleman do not brand the opposition as cheats simply because the umpires made some mistakes and because India fell apart in the final session.
Indian has failed to fully acknowledge its own deficiencies and while they live in denial and blame others for their loss … they will continue to lose.
Anyway, you must be feeling better now that the ICC has ‘caved in’ to your monetary clout and dismissed the umpire, allowed Harbhajan to play and charged an Australian.
The record though stands at 2 – 0 and my guess is the Aussies will be very fired up to give you the mother of all hidings in Perth.
Perhaps India should have gone to Caberra on Monday and got some much needed practice instead of sulking in their hotel.
No hard feelings guys, but you really do need to “get over it”.
Indian Flipper! or Flipped Indian!
I don’t know what medication you are on right now but there is sudfficient material on hand to conclude that you have lost it completely. As it happens I know something about hockey and your contention…”I am an Indian, and Indians are bad losers. Look at their track record in Olympics hockey contest? They squeeled injustice when their team fails to deliver?…” makes no sense at all. Care to elaborate?
Also when were Indians considered winners? I believe they won the 20/20 WC. In a sane world if you finish as a top team in a tournament you are considered a winner. Lest you forget, this make you flip now, ok be ready, they beat Australia. I hope you have recovered from this news by now!
Coming to Contractor’s incident in WI, how competent are you in playing a fast bowler like Griffith? Nari made a decision and he was hurt. That’s all. Almost all fast bowlers are invariably chuckers–Srinath excepted–he had a full classic round-arm action.
Doddi Buddi,
Careful what you say sitting in USA. There is patriot act operating and abuse serves you no good. I was in W. Indies watching as a spectator when Nari ducked when you were in your diapers. I have courage to disagree with the line dished out by BCCI and you swallow it hook line and sinker. Enlightenment does not come to some even after migrating to USA. That is a pity. as far as winning 20-20 is no big deal. Talk about the World cup, I will listen. Grow up man, blind parochialism is no good.
Indian cricketers have in the past accepted the defeat gracefully. Its only in this series they have been assertive and tried to prove their point. For reasons which are obvious to any average cricket fan.
Aussies might now think twice before trying to win matches by sledging and playing mind games against their opponents.
If ICC could me made to look truth as is, through monetary clout there is nothing wrong in it.
For those who cannot see truth on their own, external force is necessary.
Doddi Buddi,
Woken up from the brainwashing done by the BCCI? I am not in the USA to be swallowing pills for every illness, perhaps that is for you. The Indian MDs over there are really MBBS with padded resume and do not go near them. Throw away the green tablets they gave you the other day!
One day I will tell you what my mate who was once a spinner in Indian test side. I wonder how much Dravid and Kuble, the educated are able to control the less educated ‘enfant terribles’ like HarbhajanSingh. Did you know that Bucknor was the favourite umpire for Indian team?
I have no problem in the name I use, there is no shame in flipping from swallowing the muck BCCI dishes out. If you want me to give a run down of how bad losers the Indians are, wait until I tell the story of what happened in the last Olympics in Athens. The problem with all Indians who live in USA ( I once did and swallowed what Nixon said about his part in Watergate break in), they never venture outside USA except travelling back and forth from India.