Despite genuine strives to tone down the verbal confrontation, the hosts will be intent on being extremely competitive and play a fired-up brand of cricket against Virat Kohli's men, said Australian skipper Tim Paine.

In March 2018, Cricket Australia banned Steve Smith, David Warner for one year and Cameron Bancroft for a period of 9 months, after the trio was found out guilty of the offense where they were deliberately trying to alter the condition of the ball during the Cape Town Test against South Africa using a piece of sandpaper.

This is when the previous coach Darren Lehmann resigned from his position despite his contract not expiring till the completion of Ashes 2019.

The incident raised allegations and doubts about the moral and ethical values of the kind of culture that Australian Cricket seemed to have developed over the years, as a professional review for the same followed.

Therein lies why head coach Justin Langer has been stressing the need to "earn back respect" from the cricket loving people around the world, with a conduct befitting of an international athlete at the highest level.

"It's been received well, I haven't heard otherwise," Paine told cricket.com.au on the pre-match handshake idea as well as the cultural review that has come out in public, "I just think it's a bit of a no-brainer, just a show of sportsmanship. It doesn't mean we'll be the nicest team in the world to play against by any stretch of the imagination."

"We'll still be really competitive and fired up out on the ground, but I think you do need to have that bit of respect between the two sides."

Paine also stressed the need to curb down the might of Virat Kohli, who has scored five hundreds across his last two Test tours down under and backed the likes of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon to come out triumph over the stiff challenge.

"I think our fast bowling attack... if they play purely on skill, they're going to trouble him. At times when we get too emotional, we can lose our way a little bit. So it's a really fine line," Paine said, "There's going to be times when they're going to get a bit fiery, I'm sure. But we need to be mindful of keeping ourselves calm enough so we can execute our skills as well."

"It's just about picking your time and picking your moment and doing what the team requires. I think it's important that guys play the way that suits them. If you're someone who likes to get into a contest one-on-one with someone like Virat, then go for your life."

"But I don't think it needs to be over the top and I don't think guys who aren't normally like that need to start doing it," the wicketkeeper-batsman signed off.

The Border-Gavaskar kickstarts with the first Test at Adelaide from Thursday, December 6.