“There was a lot of confusion. We firstly sent the 12th man out to let Jimmy and Monty Panesar know there was time left and not just the overs. Then drinks spilt on his glove and Jimmy called up to the dressing room and we weren’t sure whether we needed the 12th man or the physio. Our intentions were good so we weren’t deliberately trying to waste a huge amount of time. That wasn’t our tactics, those two were playing pretty well so the reality of the situation is Australia didn’t take that final wicket and we got away with a draw. I personally thought the game was played in a pretty good spirit the whole way through. I didn’t feel there were lines crossed and I think we’d all like it to stay that way.” England captain Andrew Strauss said.
“I don’t think that was required, I am not sure what the physio was doing out there – I didn’t see him call for any physio. I’m sure others will take it up with the England hierarchy as they should. He had changed his gloves the over before and his glove is not going to be too sweaty in one over, But it’s not the reason we didn’t win. They can play whatever way they want to play. We have come to play by the rules and the spirit of the game and it is up to them to do what they want to do. I’d give it back straight away for one more wicket and 20 less runs! We haven’t really done anything wrong and we’ve got a lot to take out of this game. I’m disappointed we didn’t win, I thought we played well enough. There are four Tests to go in the series and we will have to play at this level if we want to win. You’ve got to give England some credit for hanging in there and Paul Collingwood for the way he played. Losing the toss, it was always going to be really hard to win with the wicket the way it was but we did everything we needed to do to give ourselves a chance and unfortunately we were just that little bit short. It’s pretty quiet at the moment and there would have been a bit of celebrating and jumping up and down in the England room, I’m sure, A lot of our boys will be disappointed for half an hour after the game and then we can reflect and talk about a lot of the good things that we did. That’s the important thing, we did so many things really well in this game and we’ve got to take the confidence from that down to Lord’s and make sure we start there on the same note.” Australia captain Ricky Ponting said.