da betobet： SYDNEY – Captains on crutches are becoming a familiar sight inAustralian cricket, with Ricky Ponting today hobbling back into Sydneyafter foot surgery.
Michael Donaldson25-Jun-2002SYDNEY – Captains on crutches are becoming a familiar sight inAustralian cricket, with Ricky Ponting today hobbling back into Sydneyafter foot surgery.Newlywed Ponting, who now lives in Wollongong where his wife RiannaCantor is a student, had a pin placed in his left foot during a shortoperation in Melbourne yesterday.The one-day captain will spend about a week on crutches and will be outof action for about a month but will have a permanent pin in one of thebones in his left foot.A year ago, it was Test captain Steve Waugh who was on crutches aftertearing his hamstring during the Ashes series. Waugh recently underwentminor foot surgery as well.”Apparently it all went pretty well and I should be on these things[crutches] for a week and then hopefully back in full training in amonth,” Ponting said at Sydney airport.Ponting, who was married on Saturday, said there was more disruption tohis honeymoon than his cricket.“All it means is the honeymoon is put back about a week,” he said.”It had to be done, I’d had pain for about 12 months and had some X-raysin early January that identified a stress fracture.”Ponting said the injury didn’t hamper him when batting but caused himsome pain when fielding.His initial approach was to rest the injury after the South African tourbut it failed to respond.”I was running out of time and I really had to get it done now.”With two months until Australia was scheduled to play one-dayers and aTest series against Pakistan, Ponting admitted he was unsure where thematches would be played.He said his preference was for Australia to host the tour, which won’tbe played in Pakistan due to security concerns.”There’s been a lot of things spoken and a lot of possibilities …Morocco, Sharjah.”It’d be nice to play in Australia but the Pakistanis weren’t all thatkeen on that because they thought it was too much of an advantage to usplaying in Australia.”All that we know is that we will be playing some sort of cricket at thetime of the [scheduled] Pakistan tour, we just don’t know where it’sgoing to be.”