Look, now you've angered Ricky

Nothing makes a cricketer angrier than a muck-raking story, and an enraged Ricky Ponting is a dangerous opponent.

The breadth of coverage accorded Ponting's dressing-room blow-up in Ahmedabad was excessive; it was nothing more than people looking to make trouble.

The team bus and the dressing room are the two places where a player feels free to express himself as befits his mood. If you can't unleash some of your frustration and anger in the dressing room then where? If an explosion leads to unintentional property damage then what is required is an apology and an offer to pay the price for unleashing your anger. A batsman losing his cool after a dismissal is a sign that he cares about his performance. In that moment when the anger boils over you're not thinking about what you might break, but if you do smash something (and generally it's the bat that suffers) then you immediately feel sorry for your action. However, that doesn't mean it won't happen again. If you're quick-tempered it will happen again and you hope that next time the bat is thrown into a locker and no damage is done.

I remember once in South Africa flipping my bat at the wall after I'd been dismissed and it smashed one of my cufflinks. A case of self-inflicted punishment.

Ponting is a perfectionist; he's always been that way. He once hurled his bat 30 metres out of the nets when he was a kid at the academy. It was the end of his session and he was less than pleased with the result of his battle with Glenn McGrath.

Those people who are tut-tutting over Ponting's behaviour either have short memories or they have never been in a position where they have to regularly perform under the spotlight.

Cricketers don't enjoy it when someone says they batted or bowled badly, but they accept it as part of the price for playing the game. What they won't abide is the media indulging in a muck-raking exercise.

Nevertheless the do-gooders might have done the Australian team a favour. As the tournament heads into a critical phase, a charged-up Ponting will be a great asset to Australia, both as captain and batsman.

Another hot topic was the status of the minnows and whether they should be at the World Cup. The biggest problem with the minnows is their bowling. In general they have no bowlers of genuine pace and often possess a string of slow trundlers, as distinct from spinners. It's very hard to improve at a rapid rate if your bowling attack is cannon fodder for the major nations.

Few of the minnows have improved over the years. Netherlands and Ireland are exceptions. Afghanistan is another team with potential; they have the right attitude. It's a matter of whether they can muster enough players of sufficient skill. Kenya have gone backwards faster than a Kolkata cabbie in reverse. The countries that have little or no cricket culture are struggling to improve.

One argument used in defence of the Associate countries has been that Sri Lanka was a minnow in the inaugural 1975 World Cup. True, and they won it 21 years later, but they had a strong cricket culture and a first-class infrastructure in place. Now, though, even Bangladesh, with fanatical support but little infrastructure, are struggling to gain any real traction against the major nations.

The World Cup is too drawn out, and instead of grabbing the public's attention right from the start, there was a bright opening encounter with two of the hosts, followed by a string of boring, one-sided match-ups. A better schedule would feature two games a day in the early rounds; the first, a prospective one-sided affair, and the later match a marquee contest. The players don't like playing back-to-back ODIs but equally they hate sitting around for a week between games.

It's generally acknowledged that the 1992 World Cup, with all nine major teams playing each other, was the best format. The next World Cup is proposed to have a similar schedule, involving 10 teams, and that's a move in the right direction.