AUSTRALIA'S Ashes loss has made Ricky Ponting a better captain with a "much more steely resolve", vice-captain Adam Gilchrist said yesterday.
Ponting returned from the Ashes under fire from critics who claimed he was leading by committee and trying to please everyone.
But Gilchrist said there was a new firmness to Ponting, who was clearly backing his own judgment more often.
"Since the Ashes, Rick has come home and thought, right, he is going to do things his way," Gilchrist said.
"That's not a major regime change, but I think he saw the criticisms when he came home and he thought, 'I am going to do it my way so if there is criticism I have least done it totally my way'.
"Not that he wasn't mainly doing it that way before.
"He has a more steely resolve now. He is going to be much better for the experience over there -- as we all will in the long run.
"He has a wonderful cricket mind and I have never questioned his leadership and to be alongside him in that role, we have a fantastic relationship."
Steve Waugh had urged Ponting to back his own gut instincts more, confessing he faced the same decision as he lay in a hospital bed in Sri Lanka after colliding with Jason Gillespie in 1999.
Waugh felt if his career ended then, he would not have done himself justice as a captain because he was listening to too many voices. So he promised himself he would do things his way and, from that point, his fortunes improved.
Ponting seems to have made the same decision. He gave Brett Lee a no-nonsense directive to bowl fast in the Gabba Test, telling him he thought his new plan to become a line-and-length bowler was flawed.
Ponting may have been stirred into action by critics such as Dennis Lillee, who said he should be replaced by Shane Warne as captain.
Gilchrist liked the look of Lee at the Gabba. The team hopes Lee's five-wicket second innings haul will prove the turning point of his career.
"He was certainly back to his near best -- his most venomous," Gilchrist said.
"That was the beauty of the balance of the team. His mandate was to go out and bowl short, sharp spells and have impact. It was reminiscent of when he first burst onto the scene when he bowled fast (and) attacked the batsman."
- ROBERT CRADDOCK