AUSSIE MUPPET SHOW

It’s Oll-out war as Ponting and Hayden get stuck in

- DEAN WILSON

AUSTRALIA have got their former greats to step in and battle their corner in an early Ashes war of words with Ollie Robinson.

Like the Muppet Show’s golden oldie hecklers Statler and Waldorf, Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden have weighed in from the sidelines to try to take Robinson down a peg or two after getting riled by his comments during the First Test.

The England bowler was happy to defend his actions during the game in which he appeared to give Usman Khawaja an expletive laden send off saying: “F*** off, you f***ing pr***”.

Robinson said: “If you can’t handle that, what can you handle? We’ve all seen Ricky Ponting and other Aussies do the same to us. Just because the shoe is on the other foot it is not received well.”

Khawaja himself had no issue with their interactions throughout the game and could bask in the satisfaction of earning the playerof-the-match award after scoring 141 and 65.