Ponting surprised by Lord's crowd behaviour

Australia captain Ricky Ponting expressed surprise yesterday at the heckling he received from the Lord's crowd during the second Ashes test.

Ponting was jeered after he queried the umpires' decision not to refer a low catch taken by England captain Andrew Strauss in Australia's second innings.

He also missed a runout and a catch during the test which England won by 115 runs on Monday to take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series.

"I'm not sure why I was so much the bad guy with the fans," Ponting wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.

"Lord's is the one place around England were you don't expect to get heckled. But I guess any Australia captain is going to cop it over here.

"And some people have said that it's because I'm the last one out of the group of players who had a lot of Ashes success in the late 1990s and early 2000s. So perhaps it's payback time.