da heads bet： Ricky Ponting has sought clarification over the on-field communication between umpires and captains.
Dileep Premachandran in Kuala Lumpur15-Sep-2006
Ponting feels there is nothing wrong with a captain approaching the umpires if he felt the situation warranted it © AFP
Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, who was docked his entire match fee for arguing a wide-ball call with the umpire in the match against West Indies, has sought clarification over the on-field communication between umpires and captains.Ponting once again apologised for his behaviour but suggested that there was nothing wrong with a captain approaching the umpires if he felt the situation warrantedit. His view hadn’t found favour with Chris Broad, the ICC match referee, who fined him after the game finished on Tuesday night.Speaking to the media before the team left for an afternoon practicesession, Ponting said: “I know that’s happening even at the board level andICC level at the moment with the umpires having some input into a lot ofthat stuff. Chris did say to me the other night that he doesn’t see it asappropriate at all for a captain to be even approaching an umpire duringthe course of the game so there does need to be some clarification there.”Asad Rauf, the Pakistani umpire, was the target of Ponting’s ire duringthe opening game, and Ponting admitted that he had overstepped the line.”It was just one of those heat-of-the-moment sort of things that I tend toget a bit wrapped up in from time to time,” he said, before adding that hehad no qualms about owning up to his mistakes.”It’s always easy I think to do that, I’ve always been one when I made amistake to put my hand up and say that I’ve done it. It was important forme as a leader of my team. I wanted to get that point across to my teamthat it’s not acceptable. Everyone knows when they’ve made a mistake. Somepeople unfortunately don’t like owning up to them.”That said, Ponting still believed that there needed to be a dialoguebetween the captain and on-field officials to smooth over certainsituations. “I think it’s more the timing of it than not being allowed todo it,” he said. “The captain has got to be able to do that at differenttimes over the course of the game, so as long as the timing’s okay I thinkthat will continue.”