While Ponting is an outside chance of returning to lead Australia in the second day-night match in Cape Town Friday, medical opinion is that he will miss the game and also Sunday's match in Port Elizabeth.

With a schedule of five Tests in South Africa and Bangladesh in as many weeks coming up, there is a reluctance to expose any likely member of the Test squad to unnecessary risk.

Alcott said he was far less optimistic than Ponting about the skipper's chances of playing this weekend and conceded he risked aggravating the stomach strain in the more frenetic pace of limited-overs cricket.

"Definitely, all soft tissue injuries are in that category with one-day cricket," Alcott told The Australian newspaper Thursday.

"It's a faster game and, especially a guy like him (Ponting), he's like a little pocket dynamo and everything he does he's 100 percent.

"He's still pretty tender in the spots that showed up on the (MRI) scan.

"He's very optimistic each day and then I have a session with him and it brings him back to reality again.

"In his everyday movements he's feeling improved but, as far as being out in the middle playing for Australia, that's a different stress."