Ponting not worried about Bangladesh upset

Ricky Ponting has insisted Australia's shock defeat to Bangladesh two years ago won't be a factor when the two sides meet on Saturday in Antigua.

Australia, unbeaten in World Cup matches since their 1999 group match against Pakistan, are favourites to win the Super Eights clash. However, Bangladesh beat them by five wickets at Cardiff in 2005 led by a 101-ball 100 by Mohammad Ashraful. Before that game Andrew Symonds had been dropped from the Australian side after a late-night drinking session and Ponting said lessons from the extraordinary reverse had long since been learnt.

"We've worked it out. A lot's been said about it already," said Ponting. "It's long gone and forgotten about as far as we are concerned. We just didn't play at our best that day and there was a bit of other stuff happening around the ground.

"I had a few things on my mind during the course of the day. We lost that game, Bangladesh played well, we made a lot of mistakes and hopefully we are a better team tomorrow than we were on that day. I think we are.

"The cricket you've seen us play the last few weeks would indicate that tomorrow, the way we are going at the moment, that we should be able to play cricket good enough to win this game. That's all we've been focused on the last couple of days.

"We played a very good game against South Africa , an excellent game against West Indies . We feel we are very well prepared, we've played a game here we should know these conditions pretty well."

Australia beat South Africa by 83 runs and West Indies by 103 runs and have posted a record-total of 300 plus scores six times in a row.

Bangladesh beat India in the group stage and are no longer considered minnows by the rest of the teams including Australia. "They are in the Super Eights part of the World Cup tournament so you have to pay them the attention they deserve," Ponting said.

"We have spoken about it. They've probably used the minnow tag very well in their favour. I think they are actually a bit better than that. They have improved a lot, there's no doubt about that. They almost beat us in a Test match when we went straight there after South Africa last year.

"They've got some young players who are very capable on their day and we have prepared for them as we would a South Africa, a West Indies or a New Zealand game. We've seen some good young talent come out of Bangladesh and hopefully they continue to improve - just not tomorrow."