Australia batsman Simon Katich on Friday sought to defend his underfire captain Ricky Ponting, saying the "players let him down" in the lost Ashes series against England by failing to perform at crucial moments.
"We probably let him [Ponting] down. We all had opportunities to help him get the right result and we didn't do that," Katich said at a Bradman Foundation lunch to celebrate the legend's 101st birth anniversary, in Melbourne.
"I guess, having been involved in 2005, I thought I'd let him and the team down then... this time around, even though the tour went a bit better, I still feel there were things that I could have done better to have helped us win Test matches -- and unfortunately I'm going to live to regret that," he was quoted as saying in the Australian media.
Katich, who scored 122 in the first Test and aggregated 341 runs in the entire series, said he was disappointed that he could not contribute with bigger totals more often.
"I was disappointed I didn't convert a lot more of my starts. I felt like I was in pretty good form and, after the hundred [at Cardiff] I missed out on opportunities to convert more 40s and 50s into hundreds," he said.
Katich, who has played 43 Tests, said Australia had many good performers but they failed at the crucial moments.
"Even though they [England] might not have done it consistently throughout the five Tests, they did it at the crunch times when the games were up for grabs. And that's the difference in Test cricket: those moments came around and we didn't grab them," he said.
Katich also backed the selectors saying: "They backed us and we didn't get the job done. Criticism is warranted and we have to grin and bear it now."
