Gilchrist defends Ponting form

Ricky Ponting trudges off on Friday at Perth

Retiring Australia vice-captain Adam Gilchrist believes his team's controversial 2008 campaign is to blame for the dip in form of skipper Ricky Ponting.

Ponting's struggles with the bat continued on Friday with the captain dismissed for 25 in the Commonwealth Bank Series clash with Sri Lanka.

That modest knock followed scores of nought, nine and nine for Ponting in the opening three games of the triangular one-day series that also features India.

Ponting was embroiled in the race row that flared up following Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds’ clash in the Sydney Test against India last month, while the skipper’s conduct and that of his team was also called into question in the subsequent fallout.

Ongoing uncertainty over Australia's planned tour of Pakistan has also been a distraction, and Gilchrist believes Ponting deserves credit for the strength he has shown in the face of adversity.

"I'm sure he, like all of us, will have been worn down by a lot of the focus, a lot of the issues that have been around," said Gilchrist, who will bow out of international cricket at the end of the Commonwealth Bank Series.

"It seems just to jump from one thing to the other, whether they're highly controversial or just issues that need to be dealt with.

"Things like the Pakistan tour hanging around, the uncertainty about that, the IPL (Indian Premier League), the Indian Test series and all the issue there in the hearing, he's had to take the brunt of most of it.

"So I think we've got to acknowledge that he does that and he stands up and wants to do it, he acknowledges that that's his job so (we) try to rally around him and keep him going, but he's a class act, he'll be fine."