The triumphant tour of Sri Lanka earlier this year helped Australia batsman Damien Martyn grow in confidence and take on the Indian spinners in their own backyard.
"The tour of Sri Lanka has helped me a lot in playing on these pitches. It's just that we have been playing a lot of cricket here (in the sub-continent) in the last 12 months," said Martyn, who scored 114 in Australia's first innings score of 362 for 7 on day 1 of the third Test against India.
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It was Martyn's second successive Test century in the series following his 104 in the second innings of the Chennai Test.
"It is satisfying to get these runs in tough spinning conditions against world class bowlers. As a batsman you have to do well against the best and I am happy that I did," the elegant right-hander said.
Martyn, who scored over 800 runs since the tour of Sri Lanka in 17 innings, at close to 48 per innings, said his back-to-back tons were totally different in style.
"The two were very different centuries. The last one came when we had our backs to the wall. Today, we were just looking to be positive, play our shots and get a good score on the board in the first innings," he said.
Asked about the aggressive outlook adopted in this Test by the Australian batsmen, who scored at four per over, Martyn said, "We always play positive cricket and with myself and (Michael) Clarke in, we were looking to score well.
"I had been playing my shots early on as well and not just after the 100. It's disappointing that I got out and a couple of other wickets fell before close of play."
He praised the bowling of Indian left-arm spinner Murali Kartik.
"I thought he bowled really well. He realised early on that there was not much spin on the wicket and varied his flight and pace beautifully. It was tough to score off him and there were patches when we struggled against him."
Asked about the team plan for tomorrow, he said, "We lost too many wickets by the end of the day but if we can make 450-plus we'll be happy to take it."
About the much-talked about pitch, the Western Australian said, "It's still going to nip around; that's the hope for our quicks, who should get a lot of assistance from it as the game goes by."
