Scandals have damaged cricket, Ponting says

Sydney: Cricket's image has been sullied by recent betting scandals and the sport's governing body must move quickly to confront the issue, Australia cricket captain Ricky Ponting said Sunday.

Speaking as his team prepared to depart for a two-test tour to India, Ponting said he had no doubt allegations levelled against Pakistan during its current tour to England had harmed cricket. He added that his team had a role to play in redeeming the sport's damaged reputation.

"The events of the last couple of weeks have had a big impact, I'm sure, around the world on the way that the game is viewed, but that's completely out of our hands," Ponting said.

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"As an Australian cricket team, all we can do is play the best brand of cricket and the most attractive brand of cricket that we can play, day in and day out."

"It's important that we do that over the next weeks, realising that is the No 1 ranked team in the world against Australia."

Ponting said all international cricketers should strive to improve cricket's tarnished image.

"I think if we all do the right thing on the field, hopefully there will be something positive coming back on the newspaper pages about the game of cricket, which is what we will try and achieve," he said.

ICC action

"Unfortunately for Pakistan at the moment now, the situation that they are in, there's going to be those sort of allegations ... for quite a while I think," he said.

"The ICC need to be doing whatever they can to get on top of these things as quickly as possible and deal with them as quickly as possible," Ponting said.

"They've done a pretty good job over the last few weeks already and with this latest allegation, hopefully they will get to the bottom of this pretty quick as well."