Punter hobbles home after foot surgery

SYDNEY - Captains on crutches are becoming a familiar sight in Australian cricket, with Ricky Ponting today hobbling back into Sydney after foot surgery.

Newlywed Ponting, who now lives in Wollongong where his wife Rianna Cantor is a student, had a pin placed in his left foot during a short operation in Melbourne yesterday.

The one-day captain will spend about a week on crutches and will be out of action for about a month but will have a permanent pin in one of the bones in his left foot.

A year ago, it was Test captain Steve Waugh who was on crutches after tearing his hamstring during the Ashes series. Waugh recently underwent minor foot surgery as well.

"Apparently it all went pretty well and I should be on these things [crutches] for a week and then hopefully back in full training in a month," Ponting said at Sydney airport.

Ponting, who was married on Saturday, said there was more disruption to his honeymoon than his cricket.

"All it means is the honeymoon is put back about a week," he said.

"It had to be done, I'd had pain for about 12 months and had some X-rays in early January that identified a stress fracture."

Ponting said the injury didn't hamper him when batting but caused him some pain when fielding.

His initial approach was to rest the injury after the South African tour but it failed to respond.

"I was running out of time and I really had to get it done now."

With two months until Australia was scheduled to play one-dayers and a Test series against Pakistan, Ponting admitted he was unsure where the matches would be played.

He said his preference was for Australia to host the tour, which won't be played in Pakistan due to security concerns.

"There's been a lot of things spoken and a lot of possibilities ... Morocco, Sharjah.

"It'd be nice to play in Australia but the Pakistanis weren't all that keen on that because they thought it was too much of an advantage to us playing in Australia.

"All that we know is that we will be playing some sort of cricket at the time of the [scheduled] Pakistan tour, we just don't know where it's going to be."