SYDNEY, Feb 20: Australian skipper Ricky Ponting wants his team to help defuse anticipated hostile South African crowds and engage them in friendly banter while fielding during this month’s one-day cricket series.

Ponting’s comments follow South African wicket-keeper Mark Boucher’s urging of South African crowds to give the Australians a hard time in response to what he and his team-mates received on their recent tour of Australia.

South Africa had a terrible tour of Australia losing the Test series 2-0 and failing to make the triangular series final amidst a poisoned atmosphere in which several South African players were taunted in Afrikaans as “kaffirs” or “kaffir brothers”, racially derogatory terms for a black person.

Ponting said just before the team departure Monday that he was puzzled by Boucher’s view that he had lost respect for some Australian players during the recent series.

“To tell you the truth I’m not really sure where Mark’s coming from there. It’s disappointing to hear those sorts of things,” Ponting told reporters at Sydney Airport.

“It was a tough hard series. No doubt about that. But I don’t think there was anything spiteful on the ground,” he said. “I think at the end of the day the Test series was played in the right spirit.”

Boucher was in no mood for compromise as he told The Wisden Cricketer: “I hope our public give them a bit of stick because we’ve taken a serious amount.

“In the past our crowds haven’t been too great with them but trust me, we’re not going to sit back and say, ‘shame, poor things’.”

Boucher said that talk of the racist abuse in Australia coming from South African émigrés was utter nonsense.

“The Australian press are trying to say ex-pat South Africans are the culprits,” said Boucher.

“Well, years ago Brian McMillan and I ran after a guy who was abusing Makhaya (Ntini) at the SCG. He was definitely Australian. They know what gets to us and as long as it is within the boundaries of the expected that’s fine.—AFP