CAIRNS (Australia), Aug 1: Australia’s one-day captain Ricky Ponting has warned his players to show more discipline in the limited-overs series against Bangladesh which begins on Saturday.

The world champions raced 4-0 up in the one-day series in the West Indies in May and June but skipper Ponting said the team let themselves down badly when they fell away to lose the last three games.

“That hurt a little bit,” Ponting told reporters on Friday. “I was particularly disappointed with the way we played those last three games and that was one thing we addressed this morning in the team meeting.

“We made mistakes in those three games that you haven’t seen this team make for a long time. We didn’t respect the basics of the game and if you don’t do that in one-day cricket it’s going to come back and bite you every time.

“We dropped a lot of catches, we didn’t have batting partnerships, there were a lot of misfields, those sort of things. Looking back we felt we’d let ourselves down big time.”

Australia launch the three-match series against Bangladesh with back-to-back games in Cairns in tropical north Queensland on Saturday and Sunday. The final match will be in Darwin on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Brett Lee has passed on some fast bowling tips to his Bangladesh rivals in a bid to help the Asian nation’s pacemen reach their full potential.

“After the last Test I sat down with a few of their fast bowlers and the thing that excited me was how keen they were to learn,” Lee told reporters.

“I couldn’t go out then and there to show them things so I arranged this session and I just passed on a few tips that Dennis Lillee has passed on to me.

“I was working on a few actions, getting their actions strong, their approach to the crease — just really basic things but things that you might not be aware of unless someone points them out.”

One of the world’s fastest bowlers, Lee has taken 125 wickets in 33 Tests and produced speeds of above 150 km an hour.

Bangladesh have drawn once and lost 20 times since gaining Test status three years ago and were twice crushed by an innings against Australia in last month’s two-Test series.

Mashrafe Mortaza, 19, took four for 134 in that series and said Lee’s advice had been useful.

“He (Lee) watched my video from the Test match. He told me I had some problems with my front arm and he’s right because I have some pain in my back and I don’t know if I can play tomorrow,” Mashrafe said.

“I have learned many things from this series about my bowling — bowling to the likes of Steve Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting ... I’ve learned where to bowl (and to have) an aggressive attitude.”

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