Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has admitted that his ODI career has reached its end, but he will continue to play Test cricket.

The veteran of 375 ODIs was dropped from the Australian squad on Monday and conceded at a press conference on Tuesday that he will probably never play ODI cricket again.

"National selector John Inverarity made it very clear to me the direction that they're heading with the one-day team and that I'm not part of their plans," said Ponting.

"It's a little bit hard to come here today and say I'm retiring when I've already been left out of the side. I don't expect to play one-day international cricket for Australia any more and I'm pretty sure the selectors don't expect to pick me either.

"I will continue playing Test cricket and I'll continue playing for Tasmania as well.

"I think I've proved to myself and to everybody else that I'm still capable of dominating Test cricket as I did in the last series against India. I'm looking forward to getting back and playing the last couple of Shield games for Tasmania this year and then heading to the West Indies hopefully with some runs under my belt."

With mere scores of two, one, six, two and seven in the ongoing tri-series tournament against India and Sri Lanka, the 37-year-old admitted his form had left him since the Test series against India.

"My body has been able to get through the rigours of this summer really well and I think my mind has just been a little bit behind where my body's been," he said.

"I've had to work harder than ever in my career and I worked harder than everybody else in the Australian team right through the last 12 months. At some stage that was going to catch up with me and I think just being not quite as sharp as I needed to be at the start of the one day series has played a bit of a part in why I haven't scored those runs."

After scoring over 13,000 runs in both Tests and ODIs, Ponting insisted he still has a desire to score more runs for Australia and will make a final decision on his international career when he no longer contributes to the team.

"The passion for the international game of cricket for me has not died or changed one little bit," he added.

"I still don't see a finish line as far as my international career is concerned. Now that one-day cricket isn't there any more we all know that day is coming closer and closer for me. I don't think I'm the sort of person who is going to want to have a massive farewell series. I'll make a decision when I think that I can't contribute to winning games for Australia."


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