CAPTAIN Ricky Ponting admitted he could hardly watch as Australia secured their place in the Champions Trophy semi-finals with a nervy last-ball win against Pakistan at Centurion yesterday.

Australia restricted Pakistan to 205 for six on a twopaced SuperSport Park wicket and had looked on course for a simple victory when they were 140 for two in reply.

A stunning batting collapse, however, saw Ponting’s side lose six wickets for 47 runs and leave Australia in danger of falling short of the win they needed to progress.

With the pressure mounting and Pakistan’s seamers finding some reverse swing late on, tailenders Brett Lee and Nathan Hauritz defiantly scrambled the 19 runs they required for victory from the 25 balls remaining.

A scampered bye ensured the two-wicket win from the final ball and secured a semifinal date with England at Centurion on Friday.

“I was chewing my fingers nails up there for the last little bit,” Ponting admitted at the post-match presentation.

“We snuck across the line so we’ve got England now here in a semi-final in a couple of days time.”

Australia tormented England to win the recently-completed NatWest Series 6-1, however Andrew Strauss’ side have since been resurgent in South Africa to claim their place in the last four.

Ponting admitted he was wary of England despite the lop-sided nature of their recent games.

“We’ve just come from a really good series against them over there, but it’s different conditions here and they’ve been playing some pretty good cricket of late,” Ponting said.

‘‘We need to get back to the drawing board and talk about what went wrong in the last part with our batting this afternoon, and make sure we don’t do that again on Friday.

“As the ball got older, it reversed a bit at the end and spun a bit for the spinners, too, so we were pretty lucky we restricted them to that total. I thought the bowlers in the second half of our fielding innings particularly did a good job.”

Mike Hussey was the only player to pass 50 as the batsmen struggled to play their strokes on an inconsistent surface.

Hussey made 64, from 87 balls, before he was bowled by a Rana-ul-Naved yorker as Australia’s slump took hold.

Pakistan had already qualified for the last four before the game and will travel to Johannesburg to play New Zealand on Saturday.