'It's not revenge, it's just very satisfying' - Ponting

Ricky Ponting believes that Australia's series win in South Africa proves that his side have not fallen as far as many critics suggested after their summer at home. The loss of a Test series at home for the first time in 16 seasons, when Graeme Smith's team enjoyed a 2-1 triumph, led to queries over Australia's ability to hold on to their reputation as the world's best side.

Despite South Africa's history-making wins in Perth and Melbourne, Ponting always maintained that the series in Australia had been tightly fought. Australia started well at the WACA and the MCG before allowing South Africa to fight back magnificently and the key in Johannesburg and Durban has been maintaining their intensity for greater stretches of time.

"As I said before we left, I thought the Australian summer was a lot close than the results actually indicated," Ponting said. "I thought we dominated certain parts of the first two Tests without winning them. I think what we've done since we've been here is dominate the game, but not let them back in. We played our best cricket for longer periods of time."

Ponting has already endured the ignominy of being the first Australian captain to lose the Ashes in nearly two decades and his side famously responded by beating England 5-0 in the next series. A similarly long era of home series victories ended in Melbourne late last year and Australia's hearty celebrations after the Durban win - there were some bleary-eyed players on the plane to Cape Town the next day - confirmed how desperate they had been to bounce back immediately.

"It's not revenge, it's just very satisfying," Ponting said. "I'm just very proud of this group of players that we've got here that they've been able to play at this level over the last couple of weeks. We played some amazing Test cricket over the last couple of weeks and a level of cricket that everybody outside of our dressing room thought we weren't capable of. That's been the most satisfying thing for me."

Having secured the series and their No. 1 ranking, the Australian players have been joined by their wives and girlfriends and have several days free of training and team commitments to enjoy the sights of Cape Town. The South Africans, on the other hand, have returned to their home cities and will spend the week and a half between Tests picking over what went wrong after the euphoria of their Melbourne triumph.

"There are a lot of disappointments but for us it's about looking at that now and finding out where we can get better," the captain Graeme Smith said. "Maybe when the emotions drift away a bit more we can get more clinically into where we want to improve and how we can get better."