Coach John Buchanan admits Australia's fielding has been below standard in the Test series against India after another sloppy effort on the first day of Steve Waugh's farewell match at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Simon Katich dropped a catch, Stuart MacGill missed a clear runout chance, Jason Gillespie made a return which would have embarrassed a six-year-old while even Ricky Ponting was jeered for missing a simple stop in the outfield.

Add to that Brett Lee's 15 no-balls, including one which would have earned a wicket had he stayed behind the crease, and Australia started 2004 on a shoddy note as India reached stumps at 3-284.

Katich's miss takes Australia's tally to 13 dropped catches for the series, which have collectively been worth over 500 runs.

Indian captain Sourav Ganguly, when grilled about his team's poor ground fielding after the Melbourne Test, took pleasure in pointing out Australia's catching woes.

And Buchanan admitted the Australians were not living up to their high standards.

"We haven't fielded our best today and we didn't field our best on the first day of the Boxing Day Test match and you can probably recall other instances through the series so far," Buchanan said.

"We set standards that we're not living up to at the moment."

However, he said the description of some Australian players as "unwieldy" in the field was "pretty harsh".

"I think the team is athletic as it can be and I'm not sure it's an ageing question ... it's been, in parts, a fielding effort we all know we'd like to improve on but if we look at the whole series there's been some very good fielding and good catches taken.

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