MELBOURNE – Australia captain Ricky Ponting said Tuesday he had overstepped the mark with his prolonged argument with the umpires in the fourth Ashes Test that earned him a fine and a censure from the match referee. “My actions on the field yesterday have caused a massive reaction overnight and I just wanted to get my points across about it,
” Ponting told ABC radio. “I mean I understand that I overstepped the mark yesterday. Looking back at it last night I realised that it didn’t look good.” Meanwhile, Australian cricket commentators Tuesday turned on captain Ricky Ponting, with Ian Chappell saying the incident should have seen him suspended. “If I was adjudicating I’d think it was a suspendable offence,
” Chappell said in a report carried in The Australian. Former Australia captain Mark Taylor said while “a confrontation between players” was occasionally acceptable, players should draw a line with umpires. “Every captain sooner or later reaches the end of his tether,” wrote Peter Roebuck in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Roebuck said Ponting had “no business” arguing with Dar, or taking his point up with Pietersen or umpire Tony Hill, “let alone becoming agitated.” “He took the matter too far. It is not right for any captain, let alone an international leader, to challenge a decision so publicly and persistently,” he wrote.
