Australia vow to improve their conduct

Australia's players have had a long and frank discussion about their on-field behaviour as aftermath of the heated battle with West Indies continues to simmer. Australia are trying to focus on Pakistan, whom they face in the Boxing Day Test starting on Saturday, but the Chris Gayle-Shane Watson bickering just won't go away.

A day after Watson said he was baited by Gayle at the WACA, Gayle has responded by calling Watson "soft" and "easy to get wound up over silly things". Watson's over-the-top celebrations at dismissing Gayle in Perth led to a fine of 15% of his match fee, making him the third Australian to be docked by the match referee during the Test.

Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson were also fined for their ugly clash with Sulieman Benn and in the Adelaide Test Doug Bollinger was reprimanded for showing his anger at an umpire's decision. The incidents have left the Australian team embarrassed and Simon Katich said the squad had addressed player behaviour on Wednesday.

"As a group we've spoken about that at length this morning at our meeting," Katich said. "It's good to get it out in the open. The problem sometimes is that emotions come out on the field and in the heat of the moment you do things that later on you probably hope you'd do things differently. We've all been there and done that, from that point of view it's a matter of learning from your mistakes."

Haddin is certain that he has learnt from his experience in Perth, where he pointed his bat angrily at the bowler Benn after a relatively innocuous clash between Benn and Johnson. Haddin conceded that his own actions were not appropriate but he said that Gayle "needs to get over" his incident with Watson and the Australians were especially keen to move on.

"It wasn't a good look pointing my bat," Haddin said. "It was probably a bit too animated for what the occasion was. I apologise for that, I shouldn't have pointed my bat, but apart from that, Test cricket is an emotional rollercoaster sometimes. It's a pretty tough environment to be in, so there's going to be occasions when your emotions get the better of you.

"It's just one of those things that happened in the heat of battle and with a bit of luck it won't happen again. It wasn't a good look for the fans and it especially wasn't a good look for the kids. I'll be working on that to make sure it doesn't happen again."

The all-too-regular meetings between Australia's players and the match referee also attracted the attention of the Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland. He agreed with Watson's own assessment that he had gone over the top with his celebrations at dismissing Gayle, but he was confident Ricky Ponting was doing his best to improve the behaviour of his men.

"I was as disappointed as anyone about a couple of incidents in the last two Test matches," Sutherland said on the radio station SEN. "But at the same time I know there's an absolute commitment at his end to see these things improve and for the Australian public to be proud of their cricket team and how they perform on and off the field."