Best tour I've been to: Dhoni

It was a story of all's well that ends well for Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni as he described the tour of Australia as "the best" in his cricket career after the Men in Blue clinched their first-ever tri-series victory.

Dhoni scripted history by leading the young Indian team to a nine-run win in the nerve-wrecking second finals of the tri-series at the Gabba today.

India beat Australia by nine runs in the second final today. Having set a target of 259 for victory, India bowled out Australia for 249 runs.

"This is the best tour I have been on. It cannot get better than this as we played the world's top two teams - Sri Lanka and Australia - and then beating them to win convincingly in two successive finals," said Dhoni.

The one-day captain, who had also led India to Twenty20 World Cup glory last year, said the win was specially significant for his young team.

"It is a building-up stage for my team with most of the young blood in the absence of the seniors," he said, and gave credit to the youngsters for proving their detractors wrong.

The youngsters had come under fire after India failed miserably in their one-off Twenty20 game against Australia immediately after the Test series and before the tri-series.

"After the Twenty20 game, pressure was on us, especially on our batting but we improved. We were enjoying each others' successes, and this was a very important factor," he said.

Ponting confesses being outplayed by India

His trademark swagger missing after a humiliating defeat, Australian captain Ricky Ponting today acknowledged that Indians had "outplayed" his world champion team in the tri-series finals.

"All credit goes to the Indian team and Mahendra Singh Dhoni that they outplayed us in the last week," Ponting said after the nine-run loss in the second tri-series final at the Gabba.

Ponting, however, did not offer any excuse for the defeat and admitted that his team could not put up a good show in both the finals.

"No excuses for we haven't won. We haven't played that well as we played in the lead up games. We were not at our best in the last game at Sydney and here," he said referring to 2-0 scoreline in the best-of-three tri-series finals.

Asked by former Australian captain Mark Taylor if the off-field controversies had affected the team, Ponting said that in the last week or so things had quietened down and still the team had lost.

"All that (off-field controversies) had gone down last to last week. But we played our worst cricket in last couple of games," he said.

About India producing surprise players, Ponting said Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar did an outstanding job for their team.

"Ishant Sharma was very good in the series and Praveen Kumar also came good in the last couple of games. Ishant's presence was vital for the team but others made up well for his absence," he said.