Want to win and earn respect as well: Paine

Time Paine will be leading Australia for the first time at home, and the “accidental” skipper has an envious task of beating the World No 1 side which is led by world’s best batsman at the moment. The young captain understands the magnitude of his task and he handled the media with the deftness of a veteran at the job. Excerpts

On leading Australia first time at home: It’s a huge honour, a massive privilege, I just had an interview, a one on one, with Ricky Ponting and we went through the names of Australian Test captains over the years. So it is a little bit of daunting to be in a bracket with some of those guys. At the same time, I’m trying to keep it as simple as I can, I’m trying to be myself and do my job which is first and foremost to keep wickets and bat. I’m hugely honoured to be captain of Australia but I am not letting it weigh me down too much.

On playing to win or playing to be loved: Both. That’s what we are here for, we play Test cricket to win, there is no doubt about that and clearly we’ve realised we needed to do some work in some areas of gaining the respect of our country is as high a priority as is winning.

On challenge of playing just four bowlers: The wicket over the last few years here has given enough throughout the game (to not need an all-rounder). We've obviously got a lot of confidence in Nathan Lyon bowling a lot of overs if we need to. And probably the fact that all our three quicks go in really fresh, so we've got confidence in them -- particularly at the start of the series. It's probably unlikely that we'll use the three quicks as much as we will in this game, throughout the whole series as it wears on, but this being the first Test we think they'll do the job.

On batting first: Yeah, that (heat) probably sways it to batting (first), doesn't it? You want to bat on days when it's 40-odd degrees. There's always a good coverage of grass here in Adelaide and it offers a bit with the new ball, but there's also a lot of runs to be had out there. So I think normally Australian teams like to bat first but we'll have another look at it in the morning before we make that final call.