Australia was blown away by pace duo Wayne Parnell (4-25) and Dale Steyn (4-27) at Centurion on Sunday night as South Africa bowled the tourists out for 131 and scored 3-132 in 26.2 overs in reply.

South Africa's win squares the five-match series going into Thursday's third game in Cape Town, where No3 batsman Ponting says it's time for himself and openers Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin to lead the side to a big score.

The only time Australia had set a lower target in a non-reduced ODI match was in January 1979, scoring 101 at the MCG against England (in a 40-over-per side contest).

Callum Ferguson (50) and No8 Mitch Johnson (30) were the only batsmen to score more than 10 for Australia on Sunday and Ponting slammed the ''poor shots'' played by his batsmen.

Ponting was caught behind for eight off Parnell, pushing forward and making the score 2-11.

However, in Australia's defence, man-of-the-match Parnell and pace spearhead Steyn were in dazzling form, swinging the ball around alarmingly.

Haddin was Australia's leading runscorer in February in the ODI series against New Zealand with 283 runs at 70.75 and followed up with 53 and 1 in this current series.

Clarke hit 188 at 47.00 against the Kiwis and 1 and 5 in the past week.

Ponting backed his openers to bounce back and publicly challenged himself to lift.

''There were some poor shots from the top-order players in particular and we exposed our middle order to the new ball,'' Ponting said yesterday.

''If you look back to the one-day series in Australia against South Africa and New Zealand, generally we were a couple of wickets down early on.

''So we're just not getting enough consistency out of that top order right now and that's an area that we need to improve on if we want to win this series.''

In those 10 ODI games in Australia after the Sydney Test, Australia's openers put on less than 30 eight times.