Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting has moved to diffuse tensions arising from his side's ICC Champion's Trophy celebrations in Mumbai by offering Indian cricket boss Sharad Pawar an apology.
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The actions of the Australians on the podium following their historic first tournament win sparked a storm of controversy in the Indian press after the captain himself was seen impatiently gesturing for the trophy to be handed over by Pawar, who was then moved aside by Damien Martyn.
"If we all feel that's relevant we'll probably do that," Ponting said when asked if he was prepared to apologise over the incident.
"I'm a bit disappointed some of the gloss has been taken off, but I'll be doing the best I can to get to the concerned people in India to get my point across and let them know we weren't trying to embarrass them."
"We've got to show the due respect to everyone that's around us, that's part of representing your country. Hopefully we haven't offended him too much … we've got to be aware of those sorts of things in the future."
Ponting said he would be speaking to Pawar to personally gauge his feelings following the incident and said an apology would be forthcoming if appropriate, but maintained there was no harm intended.
"We were all pretty keen to get the photo taken and get off the stage and enjoy the moment for what it was," he continued.
"If there needs to be anything done from the Australian cricket team's side, I'm more than happy to do that and hopefully it can be forgotten about and we can move on."
