Ahmedabad, March 24: With three consecutive wins under their belt and a great run of form in the competition, Ricky Ponting’s Australians were tipped to go all the way in the tenth edition of the ICC 2011 World Cup. But the mighty Australians have had to bow out of the tournament thanks to a laudable team effort by the Indians in the quarter-final at Ahmedabad.

Ricky Ponting, having possibly played his last ever World Cup, spoke to the media post-match.

Excerpts from the interview

On losing a well fought game

Yeah, we competed hard, there is no doubt about that. We had a chance at the half-way break, 260 I thought on that wicket was a reasonable total. We didn’t bowl as well as we needed to bowl. We needed to take a few more wickets in the middle of the innings. Probably with 15 overs to go it was a touch-and-go sort of a game. Yuvraj [Singh] and [Suresh] Raina played really well.

On being in with a chance after MS Dhoni’s dismissal

Probably, we did [have a chance]. It was important that we kept attacking with the ball, that’s what we needed with Raina and Yuvraj [Singh]. [They are] very good players who are very capable of finishing the innings well. So we needed to get into their tail, we weren’t able to do that.

On what they can take back from the tournament

We’ve had our moments here, it’s disappointing bowing out now. I think we are probably a better team than [our performance today presented] [and like] we showed throughout. We played a reasonable game today but we were not good enough. Full credit to India for the way they played and good luck to them for the rest of the tournament.