Like many of his peers in the Test team, Usman Khawaja does not have particularly fond memories of touring the subcontinent, something he is desperate to change as Australia embark on a four-match series against India later this month.
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The elegant stroke-maker has toured the region three times since making the Australian team six years ago and has played four Tests, two against Sri Lanka in 2011 and two more against the same team last year.
Those trips to Sri Lanka bookended his 2013 tour of India where he was one of four players, alongside Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson and James Pattinson, embroiled in the homework saga involving then-coach Mickey Arthur.
His subsequent suspension for failing to provide written feedback on how the team could improve ended Khawaja's chance of playing Tests on that tour, meaning the series opener in Pune on February 23 will be his first at that level against the superpower nation.
"It was a tough tour [India 2013], even from the sideline, just because we were losing games and things weren't going our way," Khawaja told Fairfax Media from the Australian team's training base in Dubai.
"There was a bit going on in and around the change room at the time. I think that happens from time to time, especially when you start losing games – it's tough work.
"It's one of those things, we have a different group now, [different] support staff.
"All experiences ... probably more so bad experiences or experiences where you fail probably help shape you as a cricketer and a person more. You always seem to learn when you don't quite do as well or when the team doesn't quite do as well, if things don't go your way."
Australia lost that series 4-0 and still haven't won a Test on Indian soil since 2004, when Adam Gilchrist led the side to a memorable 2-1 win.
Their last trip to the subcontinent was in July last year for three Tests against Sri Lanka, a series Australia lost 3-0.
Khawaja played in the first two matches before he and fellow Queensland batsman Joe Burns were dropped for the third Test, the former having made just 55 runs in four innings.
Reflecting on his axing a few months later, Khawaja revealed he felt Burns and he had been made "scapegoats", given there were others in the team also struggling to score runs.
"It was just disappointing, also because we just lost the Test match and we lost that series," Khawaja said.
"We had that first Test match in our grasp, we had the chance to win that Test match and we didn't take it and we lost the series.
"We'd really like to get in a similar position against India so we can capitalise. But that's cricket. Credit to Sri Lanka, they played really well, they had some young players who really stood up that tour."
In four Tests on the subcontinent, Khawaja averages less than 20, in stark contrast to the superb numbers he's put up in Australia during the past two summers.
Last season he cracked 504 runs in four Tests, which included three centuries, and this time around he bounced back from his demotion in Sri Lanka, scoring 581 runs in six Tests against South Africa and Pakistan, as well as helping himself to a couple of Sheffield Shield hundreds for Queensland in between.
"I felt really good," he said. "The most important thing was we were winning cricket games by the end of the summer, the Test series and then the one-dayers back home.
"I scored two 97s, I scored a hundred, I scored back-to-back shield hundreds in between there, so I wasn't not scoring runs. Sometimes in cricket, 97 is not the same as a hundred. I think it's more of a perception, the way people look at it from the outside more than anything."
He's now tasked with helping nullify India's deadly spin-bowling core of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, and Khawaja is hopeful it will be a case of fourth time lucky on the subcontinent.
"I always get really excited playing against really good opposition, really good players, really good bowlers," Khawaja said.
"At the end of the day, that's what it's all about, playing and challenging yourself against the best players in the world.
"Everyone goes about their ways differently. Everyone will look at it [footage of Ashwin and Jadeja] at some point, but some people will look at it more, some people will look at it less.
"It's the modern game, everyone looks at everyone nowadays, it's just part and parcel of the game."
