Australia skipper Ricky Ponting said he was surprised by India's team selection for the tri-series final though he refused to elaborate.

He, however, mentioned that in the absence of Sourav Ganguly, India did not pick an eleven that batted deep.

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"Our strategy was to get early wickets since the Indians don't bat deep, with Ajit Agarkar coming in at seven. We didn't have a huge total and it was important to pick early wickets, which we did, picking Virender Sehwag and V V S Laxman early," he said.

He praised his team's performance on the field and termed Tuesday's victory as an excellent one in difficult conditions.

He refused to concede that his batters struggled to score runs, countering the claim with the fact that his team won by 37 runs.

"The average first innings score on this ground is 230-odd and in the second innings is 188. We could have got a few more and batted India out of the game. But despite a small total we fought hard, and with our backs to the wall beat India," he said.

He picked Hemang Badani's wicket as the turning point of the match, adding that until then his team was under pressure.

"Rahul [Dravid] and Badani had things under control and were walking away with the match till Michael Clarke got the important breakthroughs," he said.

Ponting said there is pretty little he would take back from the tour for the upcoming Test series against India but added that psychologically his team had struck a blow.

He felt there was very little time to gauge the Indian players traveling to Australia after seeing them perform on Indian wickets in the one-dayers.

But he struck another mental thump by declaring it would be very difficult for India to win a Test in Australia in the forthcoming series.

"We know that and they know that. But then cricket is a strange game and maybe India could play out of their skins and win."

He also picked on Laxman, saying he seemed shaky at the start of the game and would probably be amongst the guys the Aussies would like to have the wood on early in the tour.

He said the Indians had taken them by surprise in the first game at Gwalior but since then his team coped with the conditions better than anyone else.