Sri Lankans not concerned if Hair umpires in World Cup

Hair, who called Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing when he played here three years ago, has stood down from Sri Lankan matches in a one-day series next month also involving Australia and England.

But Ranatunga said there would be no problem with the Australian umpire at the World Cup.

``We know that Muralitharan wont be throwing ... so we won't have a problem at all,'' he said.

``All the other umpires have not had that problem for the last so many years, so we are not really concerned.''

Sri Lanka has called for the International Cricket Council to take action against Hair for remarks in his recently-published book where he described Muralitharan's action as ``diabolical'' and said he would call the 26-year-old again if he considered his action had not improved.

Sri Lankan manager Ranjith Fernando said Muralitharan had bowled before 40 international umpires and ``we cannot see how they could all be wrong.''

Ranatunga said the issue of Muralitharan's action had helped to galvanise team spirit.

``It has kept the team together. We are like one big family,'' he said.

``We never had a problem with him, the International Cricket Council cleared him and then all the (umpiring) panel cleared him.''

As Sri Lanka prepared for their opening warm-up match here, against Australia A in Perth on Sunday, Fernando said there was a price to pay for being world one-day champions after beating Australia in the showdown for the game's biggest limited-overs prize in Lahore almost three years ago.

``There is a lot of pressure because the expectations are very high, and it's not always possible to maintain winning momentum in the one-day game,'' he said.

``We know Australia will be a challenge in this new series, but we are looking forward to it. We have always come through when the going is tough and we are very confident of ourselves.''

The Sri Lankans will spend the next few days practising in the nets at the WACA Ground here before meeting an Australia A made up of young players mostly on the fringe of the national side.

The Sri Lankan touring squad:

Arjuna Ranatunga (capt), Aravinda de Silva (vice-capt), Marvan Atapattu, Upul Chandana, Aviska Gunawardena, Sanath Jayasuriya, Romesh Kaluwitharana, Roshan Mahanama, Muttiah Muralitharan, Suresh Perera, Tilan Samaraweera, Hashan Tillakaratne, Chaminda Vaas, Pramodya Wickramasinghe, Nuwan Zoysa. Manager: Ranjith Fernando. Coach: Roy Dias. Physiotherapist: Alex Kountouri.

The Australia A squad:

Greg Blewett (capt), Damien Martyn (vice-capt), Ryan Campbell, Adam Dale, Gerard Denton, Michael DiVenuto, Ian Harvey, Brad Hodge, Shane Lee, Matthew Nicholson, Andrew Symonds, Brad Young. Manager: Trevor Robinson. Coach: Allan Border.