Ponting paid tribute to the work ethic of Nathan Hauritz after the spinner emerged to lead Australia to victory against the top-ranked Proteas.

After being overlooked for the three-Test series, Hauritz claimed a career-best 4-29 from 8.1 overs.

Man-of-the-match Mike Hussey played a masterful innings of 83 not out in Australia's 7-286 and the Proteas were 145 all out in 33.1 overs before a capacity crowd of 20,487 at Durban's Kingsmead ground.

Hashim Amla fell to Nathan Bracken's bowling in the fourth over of South Africa's innings before Herschelle Gibbs hit 33 in a 74-run partnership with Graeme Smith, returning after a four-week spell caused by a broken finger.

The Proteas lost their last nine wickets for 54 runs after being 1-91.

''You know when they've got a long tail like that chasing a big score that if you can just pick up a wicket here and there along the way then it's going to take something quite remarkable from them to chase that sort of total down,'' Ponting said.

''It was great to see Mike amongst the runs and play as well as he did and control our innings for us.

''I'm really happy for Nathan Hauritz. He has been on tour for six or seven weeks and hasn't had an opportunity.

''We had great conditions for him tonight. The wicket just spun enough for him and he bowled beautifully ... and [scored] 20 pretty handy runs for us.

''We've played well today but we have to turn things around and make sure we do everything probably even better on Sunday because you'd expect South Africa to bounce back. [But] there's some room for improvement in our set-up as well.''

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AAPTONIGHT

So uth Africa v Australia, second one-day international. Centurion, South Africa, 6pm. TV time: live on Fox Sports2