Thaindian News

Melbourne, Dec 28 (IANS) Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting indicated Wednesday that he has no intentions of hanging up his boots after the Test series against India.

Ponting, third all-time highest run getter in Tests after Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, struck a defiant 60 to add to his first innings 62.

“It’s my job to be a consistent run-scorer for Australia and do my best to win games of cricket for Australia. If I feel like I’ve got some support in the dressing room that’s all that really matters to me. I want to do the best that I can to get this Australian cricket team back to a bit higher ranked than we are at the moment,” he said.

“If I can read something and learn something about what’s going to make me a better player I’ll do it, but deep down I know what I have to do to be the best player that I can be,” said Ponting.

The 37-year-old Tasmanian, who was been under pressure to retain his place in the side, lamented he could not prevent an Australian batting collapse.

“When you spend that much time in the middle, as a top order batter it’s your job to go on, make big scores. So I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to do that in either innings of this game, particularly in the second innings when we were in some early trouble, fighting our way into a pretty strong position and when I got out we lost a couple of wickets on top of that,” he said.

“Most of our batting collapses of late have actually been in the second innings as well when we’ve had games to set up,” Ponting said.

“Today I thought a couple of guys were a little bit unlucky… I thought the way that Mike approached his batting when he came to the crease was the way that you want to play. You have to show great intent and you have to counter-attack at different times and I thought the way Mike Hussey handled that situation today was great,” he said.