06 February 2004	Friday	14 Zilhaj 1424

MELBOURNE, Feb 5: Australian captain Ricky Ponting is hoping speedster Brett Lee has left his Indian rivals mentally scarred as the two nations gear up for the first of the tri-series one-day finals here on Friday.

Lee, out of form for most of the summer, burst back on the scene in the last encounter between the two countries in Perth, taking 3-22 as the world champions dismissed India for 203 on a lively wicket renowned for helping pace bowlers.

It was the first time all summer that a bowler dominated the powerful Indian batting line up which will again be at full strength for the first of the best-of-three finals.

Australia will go into the finals with a 3-1 win record against the Indians from the qualifying series and the knowledge taken from previous tournaments that they still have the wood over their opponents.

The Australians have two victories in tournament deciders in the past year, thrashing India in the World Cup final in March and scoring a convincing win in the tri-series decider in Kolkata in November.

Ahead of this best-of-three series, Australia has a 7-1 one-day final record over India, the sole defeat courtesy of a big Sachin Tendulkar hundred in Sharjah in 1997-98.

Ponting believes Australia can exploit that record. The Melbourne wicket will not offer Lee, nor his fellow pace bowlers Jason Gillespie, Brad Williams and Michael Kasprowicz, the same level of support as the Perth pitch, but Ponting said he was hopeful there would be enough in it to trouble India's batsmen .

"Hopefully we can repeat what we did in Perth," Ponting said. "Hopefully he's (Lee) created a few scars there from the way he bowled the other day and hopefully we can carry that on and bring that on into this series.

"We know if we bowl well and execute our plans well and hold onto our catches we're going to be very competitive this final series.

"I'll guarantee the Indians will be thinking about that and they've probably got every right to.

"You look back at our record against India over the last few years and it's very, very good - not only in big games but in most games of cricket we've played against them."

India were also on the front foot on Thursday with captain Saurav Ganguly shrugging off suggestions his team's batting was starting to crack.

Ganguly conceded India had discussed their losses to Australia in finals, but was determined to use it as a spur to motivate his side.

Teams (from):

Australia: Ricky Ponting (captain), Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Damien Martyn, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds, Simon Katich, Ian Harvey, Brad Hogg, Brett Lee, Michael Kasprowicz, Jason Gillespie, Brad Williams.

India: Saurav Ganguly (captain), Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Vangipurappu Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh, Rohan Gavaskar, Hemang Badani, Parthiv Patel, Sanjay Bangar, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Anil Kumble, Murali Kartik, Ashish Nehra, Lakshmipathi Balaji, Amit Bhandari. -AFP