Ponting's men arrive to face Indian challenge, prove superiority

The Australian cricket team on Monday arrived in New Delhi for a Test and ODI series against India starting October 1 in Mohali.

The Ricky Ponting-led side will leave for Mohali on Monday afternoon where they is scheduled to play against Board President's XI in a three-day practice match starting September 25.

The two Test matches are due to be played in Mohali and Bangalore. The second Test is scheduled to commence in Oct 9.

The Test series will be followed by a three-match ODI series starting October 17. The matches will be held in Kochi, Visakhapatnam and Goa.

Earlier, on Sunday, Ponting said he hopes cricket will make the headlines for all the right reasons during his team's upcoming Test series in India.

Cricket's image has been sullied by recent allegations of corruption and the International Cricket Council (ICC) needed to tackle the issue at the earliest, Ponting said before leaving for India.

"The events of the last couple of weeks have had a big impact I'm sure around the world on the way that the game is viewed, but that's completely out of our hands. There's nothing we can do about that," Ponting was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press.

"As an Australian cricket team, all we can do is play the best brand of cricket and the most attractive brand of cricket that we can play, day in and day out.

"It's important that we do that over the next weeks, realising that is the number one ranked team in the world against Australia."

"I think if we all do the right thing on the field, hopefully there will be something positive coming back on the newspaper pages about the game of cricket, which is what we will try and achieve."

Ponting's comments came a day after the ICC ordered an investigation into Friday's England-Pakistan One-Day International where suspicious scoring pattern was witnessed.

The ICC has already suspended three Pakistani cricketers following a spot-fixing scandal, while a fourth player, bowler Wahab Riaz, has been quizzed by British police.

Ponting was optimistic the ICC would succeed in curbing the menace.

"The ICC need to be doing whatever they can to get on top of these things as quickly as possible and deal with them as quickly as possible.

"They've done a pretty good job over the last few weeks already and with this latest allegation, hopefully they will get to the bottom of this pretty quick as well."