Melbourne: Calls from the Australian media that Ricky Ponting should relinquish the captaincy of the national side after the side’s 2-1 Ashes loss to England are “completely unfair”, Cricket Australia Chief James Sutherland said on Monday.

Australia’s 197-runs drubbing at the hands of England in the fifth and final test at the Oval gave England a 2-1 series win in the historic series and made Ponting only the second ever Australian captain to lose twice in England since Billy Murdoch in 1890.

Ponting who himself performed poorly according to his own standards with an average of 48 told reporters on Sunday after the loss that he was expecting to come under heavy scrutiny on his return home. The defeat also meant that Australia lost their number one position in Test rankings for the first time since the rankings were introduced in 2003.

“I think that’s completely unfair,” Sutherland told reporters in Melbourne, when asked about the calls in Australia for Ponting to lose the captaincy.

“Of course, we like to win and we’d prefer to win but as well we want to be proud of players who we know have given their all and I thought that Ricky held himself very well in the difficult situation of losing the Ashes,” he added.

Sutherland also said that CA is aware of the fact that Ponting is leading a team which is in the process of rebuilding following the retirement of greats like Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist.

“I don’t think Cricket Australia is under any illusions as to where this team is at,” Sutherland said. “We’re definitely in a rebuilding phase after losing some of the best players to ever play cricket for Australia.”

“What you get with a young and relatively inexperienced team is some ebbs and flows in performance and we saw a little bit of that in the Ashes series,” he added.

Sutherland also strongly spoke in favour of Australia’s selection panel, after former players criticised selectors for failing to pick a specialist spinner for the Oval test on a spinner-friendly pitch that showed turn from day one.

“We’ve lost the game by 200 runs, it’s a pretty significant defeat, and having a spinner in the side wouldn’t have helped us in the first innings where we were bowled out for 160 and effectively lost the game,” he said.

“I don’t think that in any way we can hold the selectors accountable for us losing the Ashes. At the end of the day the players go out and do the business on the field. For now, we lick our wounds and we really look forward to the opportunity in 2010/11, which promises to be another huge summer,” he added.

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