icons tell team to behave

Australia's top sporting greats from games other than cricket have criticised Ricky Ponting and company for behaving arrogantly. They feel that the cricket team's moral compass is getting blurred and it needs to be returned.

"We believe the No 1 rule is to show respect for your fellow competitors and currently this does not appear to be the case. Sport is only sport. It's not war. We believe Australia's Test teams’ moral compass needs to be returned and we want Cricket Australia to know that," Sport Australia's Hall of Fame's chairman John Bertrand told Herald Sun .

Sport Australia Hall of Fame has almost 500 members. To understand what it stands for, it is important to know what Sir Donald Bradman said in his induction speech in 1985.

Sir Donald said, "When considering the stature of an athlete or for that matter any person, I set great store in certain qualities which I believe to be essential in addition to skill. They are that the person conducts his or her life with dignity, with integrity, courage, and perhaps most of all, with modesty. These virtues are totally compatible with pride, ambition, and competitiveness."

Old-timers feel these qualities are now at stake. Bertrand, a sailor who won the America's Cup in 1983, said the organisation would seek an urgent meeting with Cricket Australia this week. "We will be seeking a meeting with Cricket Australia to seek to get the Australian team to readjust their behaviour so that they do show respect for their opponents," he told Herald Sun . He added, "The fallout that we are seeing at the moment is not acceptable. It's clearly damaging international relations and clearly a lot of people are upset."

According to Bertrand, two greats Australian athletes Herb Elliott and Rob de Castella have also expressed their concern about the Aussie Test team. So has Australian Football League legend Ron Barassi.

According to Barassi, Australia should be the world leader in all aspects of the game. "I'm very concerned the word unsportsmanlike is being thrown around in relation to the cricket, and there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence. It concerns me that the Australians are regularly being referred to as being arrogant and because it is mentioned so often, you begin to wonder," he was quoted as saying in the newspaper