Spectator Sport | 25 July 2009

After the Lord’s Test you have to hand it to Ricky Ponting and the boys in the Baggy Greens — they have a sense of sportsmanship that is pretty much fair dinkum. As Adam Gilchrist explains in his brilliant autobiography, True Colours, the Aussie sporting psyche takes its lead from the school playing field. That means sledging is good sport, but sending on a physio for no reason other than to let the clock tick round is just embarrassing. So all those who took pot shots at Ponting for claiming the moral high ground after the Cardiff Test can just look again at the way Punter refused to be drawn into griping about dodgy dismissals, though Lord knows he had reason to gripe. Phil Hughes was caught by Andrew Strauss, but the TV replays showed the ball didn’t carry (and at ground level like that the slip catcher should know if he hadn’t taken it cleanly — the lack of intense finger pain would be a dead give-away).