Australia hit an early roadblock in its Sri Lankan tour when local officials vetoed a bid by the world champions to use all 15 squad members in a practice game.

Australia will play a Sri Lankan board President's XI and while tourists requested the match be taken relatively lightly, allowing Australia to use the bulk of its squad in some form, local officials, led by former Test star Aravinda de Silva, were against the idea.

Australian coach John Buchanan was still negotiating the issue but captain Ricky Ponting was resigned to playing the game on the Sri Lankans' terms.

"We're were hoping to be able to give everyone a good solid hit-out," Ponting said.

"We're negotiating at the moment for that to be the case but it's starting to look like we won't be able to. If we can't we'll have to sit down and work out who we want to play and who we don't want to play."

If Australia was restricted to playing 11, Ponting said it would a tough choice between using his best players and giving some cricket to the likes of Michael Kasprowicz and Brad Hogg, who haven't played much recently.

"When you come to these sort of places it's nice to get as much time as you can in these conditions. We trained pretty hard today but there's nothing as good as match practice so I guess we'll go pretty strong in that practice game. We'll assess how some guys are going but it'll be a pretty strong side I think."

However, he said the likes of Kasprowicz, who was called in to replace Andy Bichel at the tail-end of the Australian season but didn't play a match in the tri-series, would get a game at some stage in the five-match one-day series.

"I'm sure there will come a stage in this tournament where we're going to have to rest certain guys and it's more likely to be bowlers at this stage but we'll keep an eye on everybody," Ponting said.

Ponting said it was important for Australia to prepare thoroughly for any type of pitch conditions but not to look for demons that weren't there.

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