JOHANNESBURG, Feb 14 - Steve Waugh pledged his determination to carry on as captain of Australia’s Test team as the tourists arrived in South Africa Thursday.

Waugh was dropped from the one-day squad after Australia failed to reach the finals of the home triangular series last week, but was retained as skipper of the Test team.

“There’s never a good time to be dropped, and this is not an ideal time leading up to this series,” Waugh told reporters in Johannesburg.

“My job is to get us playing good Test match cricket. We’re the number one side in the world, and we don’t want to slip down to number two.”

Waugh’s team won all three home Tests against South Africa in December and January, inflicting their opponents’ first series whitewash in 70 years.

South Africa had hoped to wrest the world Test championship from the Australians by at least drawing the series, but Australia can still be knocked off their perch if they fail to beat the hosts over the next few weeks.

“We won 3-0 but it was a tough series,” Waugh said. “South Africa didn’t play as well as they would have liked to, but (South African captain) Shaun Pollock is a great leader and we expect a tough series.”

Australia play three Tests in South Africa, starting in Johannesburg next Friday, followed by seven one-day internationals against the home side.

Team manager John Buchanan said he was “shocked and disappointed” by Waugh’s axing as Australia’s one-day captain.

Meanwhile, Waugh’s shock sacking has ignited one of the fiercest public rows in Australian sport in decades.

The decision to dump one of the country’s most revered sporting figures has led to a furious national row involving players, media and the public.

Waugh’s dismissal was featured on the front and back pages of every major newspaper in the country and was debated at length on talk-back radio programmes and e-mail chat rooms.

The overwhelming mood was one of support for Waugh. A poll on one of the country’s most popular morning news programmes was showing that around 80 per cent of respondents opposed the sacking.—Reuters