Ponting has faith

Australian captain Ricky Ponting believes the inclusion of Michael Hussey and Andrew Symonds into the Australian side for the opening one-day international in Centurion will make a massive difference.

Hussey and Symonds missed the tour opening Twenty/20 match, which Australia lost by two runs, and Ponting said that with the middle-order pair back in for Sunday's match, the tourists will be a much tougher proposition.

"We will hopefully get both Symonds and Hussey back on Sunday and be able to put a stronger team on the ground so then we can get back into playing the way we have been playing over the last few weeks," Ponting told AAP.

"If we do, then I know we will be very hard to beat."

Ponting said he wasn't concerned about losing the tour opener and he didn't believe South Africa would take a big confidence boost from the match.

"Gibbs and Smith played well and they got a total we knew was always going to be pretty hard to chase -- especially having two of our better one-day batters out of the side," Ponting said. "It was a solid hit-out in different pressure situations for some of us before Sunday."

"Will they take a lot of confidence out of their win? I wouldn't have thought so, no. They are going to have a big changeover of players into Sunday's game. I don't think there's much to gain either way out of this game, even if we had won really comfortably."

"Smith might take a bit more out of it. For him to get some runs personally might be a good thing for him."

MAJOR PARTNER

ANZ

BROADCAST PARTNERS

TVNZ SENZ

COMMERCIAL PARTNERS

Asahi CCC Dream11 Dulux Ford Gillette GJ Gardner KFC Life Direct Pals Powerade Spark Spark