AUSTRALIA captain Ricky Ponting and teammates Mike Hussey and Brett Lee can use their graphite-backed bats in the limited-overs series in South Africa.
But they will have to remove the backing or get new bats before the Tests after the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) ruled last week that the Kookaburra bats in which the blade is reinforced with a thin carbon-graphite backing do not conform with the laws of the game.
Ponting said today that he found the MCC decision "frustrating and disappointing".
"There's a couple of good ones at the moment I don't really want to part company with," he said.
"I'm going to be right to use those bats until the end of the one-day series I think.
"And then it's going to be up to me over there to get the black graphite off the back of the bat so I can use them in the Test series as well."
Ponting said he was having new bats made to exactly the same dimensions.
"The bats that I have been using ... have been made for me and had the graphite put on the back of them anyway," he said.