"Domination" over the opposition is what Australian captains strive for at all times.In their bid to "dominate" India again on their tour of India, Ricky Ponting's Australians are likely to employ the same tactics which brought them their first Test series victory in India after 35 years in 2004.
As the team prepared to leave on tour today, Ponting said: "The tactics last time worked very well for us. We were able to strangle them. We were able to take their boundaries away and make it difficult for them.
"A lot of the time we bowled at their strengths with strong fields in those areas.
"We did things differently last time and we'll look at doing that again if conditions suit."
In 2004 Australia relied on the disciplined pace bowling of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz to "strangle" India's distinguished batting line-up on the spinner-friendly wickets.
With their spin bowling severely handicapped after the retirements of Shane Warne, Stuart MacGill and Brad Hogg, the tourists will rely on pace bowlers Brett Lee, Stuart Clark and Mitchell Johnson, who have not played a Test in India, with support from the highly-rated but underperforming all-rounder Shane Watson, to emasculate the Indian batting.Ponting wrote in his syndicated column yesterday: "There is no tougher assignment than beating India at home, so next month's four-Test series is huge for us.
"Playing for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has become one of the great rivalries in cricket and it continues to grow.
Referring to the unsavoury incidents during India's last tour of Australia early this year, Ponting writes they were something "we don't have to worry about."
He says the team is "focussed on the coming tour, not series past."
Ponting said India have a very settled group of players.
"You only have to look through their side, spinners Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh are the bowling mainstays and the batsmen have been world class for a long time."
The captain admits that for Australia to dominate there will have to be a big improvement in his own form.
"Having played eight Tests in India, with an average of just 12 is something I'm not happy with. Hopefully that can be rectified on this tour.
"It's my job as captain and number three batsman to do the business wherever we play.
"While I was injured for all but the last Test in 2004, in 2001 I hardly made a run in three Tests.
"The one thing that brought me undone was that I didn't trust my technique enough. I got out in the first innings in a way that I shouldn't have and from then on I tried not to do it again, but every time I tried something different I got out again.
"It's a matter of me trusting my technique. I have a reasonable record in Sri Lanka and everywhere else the ball has spun, India is the one place that has brought me undone."
Ponting refers to the fact that young players can be demoralised in India if they are not doing well.
"If you are not used to the crowds and the heat, and you find sometimes the facilities don't allow the preparation you'd like going into games, it's easy to become negative.
"You have to try and embrace India as much as you can and understand that's the way it's going to be. Try to embrace the culture, try to get away from cricket when you can," Ponting writes.
He says: It's important to demystify India, particularly when it comes to batting against spin. We used to talk about the conditions and make more of them than we needed to.
"The more you dwell on those things, I think the harder it becomes.
"We expect pitches that will turn but it's not as if we have not played in those conditions before.
"I was interested to read that the curator in Bangalore is talking about the pitch being a fast, bouncy wicket, but experience tells me that won't be the case.
"There's all this mystique about playing on spinning wickets but almost every Test strip you play on anywhere in the world ends up being a bit of a spinning wicket by day three anyway.
"Only four players in our 14-man squad have played Test cricket in India Michael Clarke, Matthew Hayden, Simon Katich and myself but most of the guys have played one-day cricket there with success.
"What we have managed to do over the past five or six years is dominate the Indians in one-day series in India. As a result the guys will go into this series with plenty of confidence."
"We are 12 or 18 months into a rebuilding phase while India is probably 12 or 18 months away from that. There is a lot of cricket being played in that part of the world at the moment, the Indian Premier League and the Champions League, but the game is bigger than the excitement of these Twenty20 competitions.
"That's why I've been saying for a while I'm concerned about the direction where our game is heading.
"I believe to make it in the game, you have to play a lot of Test and one-day cricket, not just a few big series in which you can fill your pockets with money. Hopefully that same attitude will come through the future generations of players as well."
Ponting says there is no doubt that India is the game's "powerhouse".
"It's where it's all happening at the moment, and the game is getting bigger and bigger there."
