SYDNEY, March 1: Australian captain Ricky Ponting said he believed Friday’s shock loss to Sri Lanka was a timely wake-up call for his side ahead of Sunday’s first tri-series final against India at the SCG.

Australia appeared to be cruising at 107 for no wicket chasing 222 to win, but collapsed to be all out for 208, handing Sri Lanka an unexpected 13-run win.

The defeat boosted spirits in the Indian camp, but Ponting said the poor performance was just an aberration and expected his side to bounce back.

“I guess the positive for us to come out of tonight is that we have got that performance out the way now,” Ponting said after the loss.

“We can worry about the finals and I would rather that performance came now than on Sunday.”

”It is always painful when you lose, especially when you seemingly have a game in the bag like we did tonight.

“But it’s not the end of the world, we’ve got some finals games to start on Sunday.”

While it was another disappointing batting performance by the Australians, Ponting said he was confident his batsmen were generally in good form.

Ponting said he believed some of his players were guilty of looking ahead to Sunday’s final.

“We’ve know for a while we were playing India in the finals,” he said.

“Our guys have shown through the series at different times that they are in good form.”

Wicket-keeper/batsman Adam Gilchrist, who belted 83 from 50 balls against Sri Lanka but blamed himself for the defeat because he believed he threw his wicket away, echoed Ponting’s thoughts.

The best-of-three finals will be Gilchrist’s swansong in international cricket and he warned India that Australia would be on a mission.

“Hopefully this will sharpen us up,” Gilchrist said on Friday. “Perhaps it is a little reminder, not that we were complacent.

“Watch out, we should be sharp in the next few days.”

Meanwhile, Australian batsman Mike Hussey said his team would not be distracted by their war of words with India in the finals.

The simmering ill will between the sides boiled again this week, with the Indians complaining of provocative behaviour on the field by the home side and Australian Matthew Hayden calling Indian spinner Harbhajan Singh an “obnoxious weed”.

Singh replied by saying that Hayden was one of the least liked players in world cricket, setting the scene for an explosive finals series.

Hussey said the Australians were completely focused on their own performance and had put the emotion of their often bitter rivalry with the Indians aside.

“I think it is important that we don’t let all of the distractions play any part in our mind, if we play on emotion sometimes those distractions can have a detrimental effect on your performance,” Hussey said.

“So it is important that we just concentrate on our plans, our goals and execute our skills as well as possible.

“If we do that, if we can take the emotion out of it, I think we can play our best cricket and it would be great to go 1-0 up in the series.”

Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said his side were not interested in the verbal warfare, happy to let their actions do the talking.

“It is very important to talk about cricket right now,” he said. “Cricket is about batting, bowling and fielding.

“The verbal part remains but we should concentrate on our cricket.”—AFP