Australian Captan Ponting aims to be around for years to come

Memo Andrew Hilditch: Don't worry, Ricky Ponting intends to play on for a few more years yet.

A day after selection chairman Hilditch declared Ponting would leave a gulf as wide as that caused by Shane Warne on his retirement, the Australian captain said he still had a lot more to contribute to his rebuilding team.

Ponting was flying home on Thursday from leading a patched up Australian team to a celebrated limited overs series win over India, but not before saying his enthusiasm was undimmed.

If anything, it has been reignited by the raft of young players he has been guiding this year, and Ponting reacted with surprise that Hilditch had even contemplated the end of his playing days.

"I didn't know that," Ponting told an Indian television interviewer.

"Hopefully that's a fair way away yet, I'm really enjoying cricket at the moment, I feel like I'm playing quite well.

"The day's going to come when I'm not playing anymore, but I guess my job in the next few years is - to try to pass on some of the knowledge and as much of my experience as I can to the next generation and hope that all the traditions and everything that I've learnt about playing for Australia are continued on."

Fellow veteran Mike Hussey believes Ponting is enjoying the chance to actually captain the side now it is filled with younger players, rather than simply shuffling the bowlers around when he was leading a team of "legends".

"When we had all these legends in the team the team pretty much ran itself and he probably didn't have a lot to do," Husssey said.

"But now I feel like he's really enjoying the challenge of bringing new guys into international cricket, moulding them in the Australian way - the way we want to play."

The efforts of an undermanned team in India have filled Ponting with pride in his unit, and fostered plenty of anticipation for a future that will feature plenty of cricket in the same conditions that were negotiated so successfully over the past three weeks.

But the more immediate task is to play strong Test cricket at home to the West Indies and Pakistan, and Ponting admitted there were issues of consistency to be addressed.

"Our (Test) ranking is No. 4 at the moment, but I think we're a better team than that. I think we'll show that when we get back to Australia," the captain said.

"We've got Brett Lee and Peter Siddle nursing themselves through injury and Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin to come back into the side as well, so if we get those guys back and fit I think we'll play some excellent Test cricket in the next 12 months and you'll see our ranking go back up again.

"You want to be consistent in both forms of the game and our consistency hasn't been there really in either form of the game over the last 18 months.

"But we're starting to get that back in one-day cricket and we need to turn it around in Test cricket as well."