Australia make clean sweep of series

Australia capped off a perfect summer of Test cricket with a 176-run win over New Zealand on Wednesday --- and their captain Ricky Ponting feels his side is now ready to reclaim the Ashes.

Australia capped off a perfect summer of Test cricket with a 176-run win over New Zealand on Wednesday --- and their captain Ricky Ponting feels his side is now ready to reclaim the Ashes. The Australians arrived in New Zealand after a clean-sweep of victories against Pakistan and then West Indies in Tests and soon added another series win after two solid victories over the Kiwis.

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The next big mission on Australia’s calendar is the Ashes this winter and they will be desperate for revenge after England took the honours last year. Ponting believes his team have come through the summer perfectly and reckons everything is in order to mount a good challenge for the series that begins on home soil in November.

“I don’t think we could be in a better place,” he said following the win against New Zealand in Hamilton. “There will be no excuses from us because we’ve done everything that I would have liked to achieve this summer and we’ve done it well.

“Now that we’ve got a good successive run of wins under our belt there’s a great confidence in the group so we can look forward to the Ashes knowing we’ve done most things as well as we can.”