Skipper Anil Kumble, stung Saturday by one of India's heaviest Test defeats, says the tourists must toughen up mentally if they are to improve against Australia in next week's second Test in Sydney.
Ricky Ponting's all-conquering Australians dusted off the Indians by 337 runs inside four days at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to take a one-nil lead in the four-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.
"It hurts, not just as an individual but as team that we haven't put up a good show and I can tell you we will address that and try to put up a better show in Sydney," Kumble said.
"It's mainly a mental thing and that is something we will address so we are hungry for success when we go to Sydney. "It's just a matter of going out there and batting freely. We didn't do that in our two innings here." Amid a clamour in the Indian media for team changes, Kumble said he will check on the pitch conditions in Sydney before making any decisions.
"If you look at our batting order then all seven of them are batting well and the other two openers, who could have possibly taken someone else's place, weren't really getting runs," he said.
"It is a difficult position for me. If (openers) Virender Sehwag and Dinesh Karthik were in great form then the choice would have been easier." One burning issue is the selection of 116-Test batsman Rahul Dravid as opener to fit in Yuvraj Singh at number six in the batting order.
Yuvraj was a big disappointment in Melbourne, failing twice to impress - scoring zero and five runs - while Dravid was castigated for his painstaking scoring - five off 66 balls and 16 off 114 balls. "He (Dravid) is too good a player to worry about his batting. He just needs to go out there and enjoy his batting," Kumble said.
"I'm positive that he can do that. He has played more than 100 Tests and has scored more than 9000 runs. I am really confident he will be able to come out and bat the way he does.
"It's difficult when Yuvraj is playing so well and we don't pick him, you (media) say why not? Then when we put Rahul up the order and then make way for Yuvraj, you say no you shouldn't have done that'. "There are always ifs and buts, but for me personally I need to look at the team dynamics and see who is batting well."
Kumble also has the problem of rectifying India's shoddy fielding, which was exposed during the MCG Test in comparison to the slick Australians. "We can't really change that. We have some of the guys, including me, on the other side of 35 so it is tough for us to make those adjustments," he said.
"Whatever the best fielding unit we have then we have to manage with that. You can't win a match by fielding alone, you need to score runs and take wickets and we didn't score runs, that's what we are more worried about. "Overall our catching was good, but our ground fielding we need to up our intensity so we will focus on that."
Kumble said it will be a matter of scoring more runs to put pressure back on to Australia in the New Year's Test in Sydney. "We should have backed up on the second day here, which we didn't do," he said.
"If the bowlers bowl the way they did and ensure that they get ten wickets early on and put pressure on the Aussies, like I thought we did throughout, then we just need our batsmen to score runs."
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