Australian skipper Ricky Ponting on Thursday said Cricket Australia (CA) should not come in the way of players' participation in the cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) by raking up sponsorship issues.Ponting said it would be "unfair" if CA stopped players from participating in the BCCI-backed venture to protect its sponsors. He said CA's interference would be opposed by the Australian Cricketers' Association."There are already some globally-protected sponsors of Cricket Australia, there are a couple of them," Ponting told reporters on the eve of the tri-series match against Sri Lanka on Friday."I don't think Cricket Australia would be able to make any of their other sponsors global sponsors. If they tried to do that I'm sure the players' association would have something to say about it."It would be a little bit unfair if that was the case," he added.BCCI vice-President Lalit Modi had on Wednesday warned that Australian cricketers were in danger of losing out on participation in IPL if their Board continued to demand promotion of their sponsors during the League.Ponting compared IPL to English County championship and said CA should also look at the Twenty20 series as a domestic tournament."It's (IPL) a domestic competition (of India), as county cricket is. There's never been any worry about Cricket Australia releasing guys to go and play county cricket," he said."That's the reason Cricket Australia backed it all in the first place, because it was a domestic tournament and it wouldn't be actually taking Australian players away from their domestic competitions or the Australian team," he added.On his troubling back, Ponting said it would still take some time to recover completely."My back has been better, I must admit. It's just something that I have to get on top of," he said.We've been pretty cautious with it over the past few days. I'll be right to get through the rest of this series," he added.
