"It's crucial that we get the ball swinging in the right areas first up because we've got maybe two, three overs with the brand new ball. You see the way their [India's] bowlers bowl seam-up the first two overs, three overs max, then they hold the ball across the seam, it gets the ball chunked up, then they start it swinging back in Irish [reverse swing]. We have to make sure we understand the way it works over here. It's a lot different."

Lee refused to dignify Zaheer's comments with a response, other than to say the Australians had to be more patient when bowling to the lower order.

"The wicket wasn't capable of getting the ball above shoulder height so the whole scare tactic or the intimidation, which is all part of fast bowling, wasn't playing a role because the wicket was so dead," said Lee, who has drawn level with Craig McDermott on 291 Test wickets behind only Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Dennis Lillee.

"The way we look at it is they didn't take our 20 wickets [either], which I think plays to the fact that the wicket wasn't capable of taking those full 40 wickets. I'm not worried about that, he [Zaheer] is entitled to his opinion and that's fine.

"We know, at any opportunity, that we are capable of winning. It didn't appear that they wanted to win … There's a lot of things they can say, that they had a mental win, but we were very happy with the way we played. We can take a lot of positives."

Indian captain Anil Kumble continued to claim a moral advantage for his country in his column for The Hindustan Times .

"In all the talk of aggressive, champion sides, it might make sense for someone to ask why 83 overs on a fifth-day pitch wasn't enough time to finish the job," Kumble wrote. "Actually, I'm pretty happy with the way things panned out after we lost the toss. From the look of the pitch, this was a track on which 600 could have been made batting first. That the Australians took five sessions and more to make about 400 is a reflection on how wonderfully well our bowling unit performed."

Kumble has a strong record in Mohali, but has a sore shoulder and is under enormous pressure after a wicketless outing in Bangalore. He attacked the Indian press in his column. "With various uncharitable comments on my fitness and retirement and performance as a player and captain, it does seem like I am back in Australia again," he wrote.

"That time, 10 months ago, saw me unfortunately having to split my time between playing cricket and handling a host of unnecessary off-the-field issues, instead of being able to concentrate on playing the game and handling my team. I didn't really expect to have to go through all this again, on my home turf."

It is precisely what Ricky Ponting would have hoped for.