Stunned Ponting says misses Warne, McGrath

Australian skipper Ricky Ponting conceded Tuesday he missed retired ace bowlers Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath after his side were thumped by India, but vowed to fight back.

Australia suffered its worst Test defeat in a decade here, crashing to 195 all out after chasing a mammoth target of 516 in the second Test.

India secured a massive 320-run victory to go 1-0 up in the series, India's biggest Test win by runs ever, bettering their 280-run mark against South Africa in 1996.

Ponting said some of his side were suffering from inexperience but had complete confidence in their ability to bounce back for the next Test. "I have total confidence in my group. With the experience and talent that we have, I am sure we can turn things around pretty quickly," he said at a post-match press conference.

"Ideally of course I would have liked to have an attack with the McGraths and Warnes. But we've got what we've got. There is a bit of inexperience, we don't have a match-winning spinner," he said.

"But I am not worried about the inexperience. The spinners we have did their job reasonably well."

Ponting however conceded that Australia were not good enough in the field nor at the crease and were outplayed by India.

"We weren't good enough in any aspect of this game, be it fast bowling, spin bowling, batting and, at times, our fielding was a bit sloppy, so we've been outplayed," he said. "Sometimes as a captain and player you have to accept that and say they were better than us this week. We were better than them last week, but that's irrelevant now and they're 1-0 up going into the next Test.

For Australia, which won the Border-Gavaskar trophy in India in 2004 after a gap of 34 years under Adam Gilchrist's captaincy, it was the biggest defeat against India since 1977 in Melbourne. "India have had a great game here," he said.

"It is up to us now to regroup and bounce back. That's a challenge because we are not accustomed to being behind in a Test series.

"It's a bit of a mindset thing. We have to learn our lessons from this game and then clear our minds before we head into the third Test. We just need to finetune our game. The teams will disperse for a short break in the lead up to the third Test in New Delhi from Oct 29-Nov 2. The fourth and final Test will be played in Nagpur from Nov 6-10.

MOHALI, India,

Wednesday AFP