Ponting’s men surprised by Pak dope fiasco
Australian skipper Ricky Ponting on Tuesday said the doping episode involving Pakistani pacemem Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif had come as a big surprise to his team and recalled how they had come out well from a similar scandal four years ago to win the World Cup.
“We have all been surprised and a bit shocked to know about the allegations. We don’t know much about it. It’s a PCB matter and they have to get to the bottom of this. We have to play tomorrow and that’s all we are focussing on,” he said on the eve of the match against West Indies.
Having gone through a similar scandal involving champion leg-spinner Shane Warne in 2003, Ponting said his squad did well to recover from the mighty blow.
“It was obviously pretty hard for us at that time. We had a team meeting once we found out about Shane’s incident. We decided to get everything out in the open and talk about it as much as we could that night itself so that it didn’t continue the next day into our cricket,” Ponting said.
Like the Pakistan Cricket Board had done prior to this edition’s Champions Trophy, the Australian Board had also tested all its players at home before the World Cup, which resulted in Warne’s positive dope test for a diuretic.
