Sydney, Dec. 5: Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting says his side deserves the number one ranking in Test cricket even if South Africa defeats them this month.

"It has taken us a long time and a lot of great wins in different conditions around the world to get us to that No. 1 spot," Fox Sports quoted Ponting, as saying on Thursday.

SYDNEY, Dec. 5  -- A lawyer for a man who faked credentials to pass as a mechanic for Australia's Qantas airline said Thursday his client lives in a "parallel universe."

A psychologist testified to a court in New South Wales that Timothy McCormack, 27, is a "pathological liar," The Sydney Morning Herald reported. McCormack pleaded guilty in September to getting a job with the airline by fraud.

"My client is trying to create for himself this mythological place where he had greater status and where he could in fact hide from his utter self-loathing," lawyer Sydney Jacobs said, describing McCormack's world as a "perfect parallel universe."

Sydney, Dec. 5 : Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting has said that he should have avoided the team’s tour to India in October and November this year and given himself some more time to recover from his wrist surgery.

"Probably right at the time, with the break that I had after the West Indies and leading into the Indian series, and the Indian series being as big as it was, I was probably not forced, but I wanted to come back and resume playing as soon as I possibly could," Ponting said.

"It would have been nice to have another couple of months off, but I wasn''t afforded that luxury,” Fox Sports quoted him, as saying.

Sydney  - Australia's national anthem has been banned at an Islamic school in Brisbane, the Courier-Mail reported Friday.

The paper obtained a copy of a memo sent to teachers in July banning Advance Australia Fair, and a former teacher, Pravin Chand, confirmed that the anthem was found to be against the "Islamic view and ethos."

The revelation comes a week after 200 people joined a demonstration outside council offices in nearby Gold Coast urging councillors to deny permission for a new Islamic school.

Sydney - Car sales slumped 22 per cent in November as Australians postponed purchases for fear of losing their jobs in a recession, figures released Thursday showed.

Sydney, Dec. 4 : Everyone knows that Australian captain Ricky Ponting has been Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh’s bunny in almost all the series that have been contested between the two countries since 2001, and if Ponting does go through with his `horses for course” strategy, he would probably have to bar himself from facing the Indians anywhere on the cricket field.

At least, that is what former Australian fast bowler Damien Fleming thinks. Fleming told the Sydney Morning Herald that in cases where a horses for courses policy has been followed in the past, it has always been the bowlers, rather than the batters, who have been made the whipping boys.