MELBOURNE: Ricky Ponting made clear he had no plan to step away from cricket on Wednesday after his second half-century of the first Test against India rescued Australia and gave them a chance of victory.
The former skipper looked in good form as he scored 60 following a 62 in the first innings, helping Australia to a 230-run lead over the Indians with two wickets left and two days to play at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
There have been calls for Ponting, the oldest player in the Australian team at 37, to make way for a younger man, but he continued to defy his critics even though he is without a Test century in almost two years.
Ponting, who stood down from the captaincy for Michael Clarke last March, is Test cricket's third greatest runscorer behind Indians Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid and has plans to carry on.
"I don't care what people outside the dressing room are saying, if I've got the support inside the dressing room that's all that really matters to me," he said after Wednesday's play.
"I want to do my best to get this Australian team back to a bit higher ranked than we are at the moment and be a consistent runscorer along the way.
"There's plenty of motivation out there for me but first and foremost it's for me to be a successful player in a successful team."
Asked how he dealt with the constant speculation over his place in the team, Ponting said he had been gratified by the public support he has received.
"I don't feel like I have to do that (stay away from the negativity)," he said.
"If I can read and learn something (in the media) about what will make me a better player then I'll do it, but deep down I know what I have to do to be the best player I can be.
"I've been trying to do that for a long time and it's been nice this week that I've got a couple of results, albeit not what I was quite after.
"That's one thing I've noticed right through the last few months when things have not been going the way I would have wanted, the support from the public has been outstanding."
Ponting's last Test century was 34 innings ago and he felt bittersweet about his latest half-century, in a fighting 115-run stand with Mike Hussey.
"It's nice to get a few runs and spend some time in the middle, but when you spend that much time out there and you get past 50 it's your job as a top order batter to go on and make big scores," he said.
"So I'm disappointed that I haven't been able to do that in either innings of this game, particularly in the second innings."
He denied that Australia, who once dominated world cricket, were in decline.
"I don't think we're struggling that badly. Any series we've lost over the last couple of years has been against the number one ranked team in the world, so that's another way to look at it," he said.
"We're probably not dominating as much as we were five or six years ago but that was always going to come to an end at one stage and at the moment England are the only team that are dominating Test cricket.
"We know what we have to address and the areas we have to improve if we want to get better and over the last few months we taken a few steps forward."
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