Time to 'forget' Johannesburg epic - Ponting

According to Ricky Ponting, Australia's unforgettable one-day loss to South Africa last month is not a consideration as his side prepares to play Bangladesh in three matches beginning on Sunday. Australia swept Bangladesh 2-0 in the preceding Test series, but the focus has now shifted to the three-match one-day series scheduled at Chittagong and Dhaka.

When reminded of that record-breaking match at Johannesburg, when South Africa chased down 434 in one of the most famous matches ever, Ponting grinned. "It would be nice if we could score that many runs again and hopefully bowl a bit better that would be nice," he told AFP. "Look, really, that day was an amazing day's cricket as we all know, we got a lot of things right and we got a lot of things wrong. South Africa got the better of us that day, for us the important thing was that we forgot about that match as quickly as we could because we had Test cricket starting."

Australia regrouped in quick time and whitewashed South Africa 3-0 in the Test series, and Ponting maintained that the only way to look was forward. "There is no point thinking about that game leading into our first one-day game here, it is about being ready for these conditions," he said. "We have a lot of different players coming in from Australia who have not done much in the past few weeks and now getting their games ready for the weekend. That game is forgotten about and we just have to focus on doing things right here."

Ponting, who was yesterday displaced as the No.1 one-day batsman in the world by India's Mahendra Singh Dhoni, has also renewed his demand that cricket's administrators give their players a break.