There's no room for romance when you are captain of Australia. On Saturday, Ricky Ponting was celebrating his marriage – on Monday, instead of setting off on honeymoon, he was packed off to hospital to undergo foot surgery.

Ponting, who has a stress fracture of the left foot, was operated on at The Avenue Hospital, Melbourne. He was in increased discomfort during the one-day series defeat against Pakistan, and will be left with a permanent pin in one of the bones in his left foot. He will spend about a week on crutches and will be out of action for about a month.

"Apparently it all went pretty well," said Ponting. "I should be on crutches for a week and then hopefully back in full training in a month."

Ponting said there had been more disruption to his honeymoon than his cricket: "All it means is the honeymoon is put back about a week."

"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."

"We have a tough schedule ahead, and by getting the injury seen to now, I am confident that I will be fully fit as we approach the Pakistan series, the summer's Ashes series and the World Cup."

With security fears still dogging the Pakistan tour, Ponting admitted he was unsure where the series would be played.

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

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