"They have a fantastic side. Over the last 15 to ten years they have won consistently both home and away," Ponting said.

Ponting made his Test debut against Sri Lanka in 1995 at the MCG and has been involved in some of the big encounters between these teams, notably, the finals of the 1996 and 2007 World Cups and the semi-finals of the 2002 Champions Trophy tournament and the 2003 World Cup.

"Sri Lanka would be still tough I feel and they have beaten us in a couple of big games like the 1996 World Cup final and the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy semi-final. Although we have dominated them overall, they are pretty dangerous when you have their backs to the wall," he added.

Ponting also felt that the wickets of Sanath Jayasuriya, who had scored three hundreds in his last four games in Sydney before Friday's clash and Kumar Sangakkara, who scored 192 in Hobart in a Test Match last November were key wickets.

"Jayasuriya has played well against us in the past here. His and Kumar Sangakkara's wickets were the crucial ones I thought. Sangakkara looked really good earlier on. He was a massive wicket for us. Jayasuriya is a very dangerous player early on and with the new ball that's probably the easiest time to score runs," Ponting said.

He also felt that his side assessed the wicket well and believed that a total of 250 was defendable.

"The wicket was not easy to bat on and it was a bit two paced as we expected. Our boys were very competitive. We didn't get off to a flying start and having assessed the wicket properly, we were absolutely sure what we wanted to do. Gilly (Gilchrist) played a slightly different innings to what we have seen from him and Michael Clarke paced his innings very well. I thought 250 plus was a very good total on that wicket."

Australia will play India today (10) in Melbourne and after that India will travel to Canberra to take on Sri Lanka on Tuesday.