Ponting finally scores on tour

VISAKHAPATNAM, India - It wasn't quite Australia's Funniest Home Videos but Ricky Ponting had a quite laugh when he saw a replay of his performance in the third one-day cricket match against India.

Ponting said a review of the video helped him correct a basic error in his footwork which allowed him to return to his long lost best form as he scored 101 to lift Australia to a 93-run victory over India and level the series 2-2 here yesterday.

"I hadn't had a chance to look at some of my earlier innings - they weren't long enough," Ponting said.

"But I had an opportunity to sit down and look at the replay of the previous game.

"I had a bit of laugh at it - things didn't look great."

Ponting immediately identified his problem as going too far across his crease and forgetting to move forward.

"I was just going straight across . . . once you go there with your foot closed off, you can't go anywhere else and I was getting stuck at the crease.

"I worked hard in the nets and it paid off."

Ponting said his immediate feeling on making his seventh one-day century was relief after a Test series which had netted him 17 runs at an average of 3.40.

"It feels great to get some runs after a long and frustrating tour.

"It's been a long hard tour. It's nice to not only be back in the runs but to get a big score - to get a hundred was a good feeling.

And for now, at least, he felt he'd packed away his problems with Harbhajan Singh, who took his wicket five out of five times in the Test series.

"Hopefully they're all finished.

"We've only got one game to go and so far in the one-day series all of our batsmen have played Harbhajan pretty well."

Ponting admitted his form was so bad in the Tests he expected to miss out when one-dayers started.

"I was lucky to play the first one-day game because my form going in there was pretty ordinary but the selectors stuck with me there and in the past couple games things have started to come right again."

Captain Steve Waugh said Ponting's return to form justified his faith in the Tasmanian.

"He was always going to come back at some stage - he's too good a player not to have," Waugh said.

"In international cricket you're always going to have your down times but as long as you support your players and - here's that word again - have faith in your players you know they'll come back eventually.

"He's worked hard in the nets and all credit to him. He started off scratchy again today but once he had time in the middle he played very well. He's a class player and we knew he was going to come through eventually."