For four hours on Friday morning, India’s batters were given the runaround by Australia’s excellent pace attack, expertly led by Josh Hazlewood. Save for brief pockets of resistance from KL Rahul, then the ebullient Rishabh Pant and finally impressive debutant Nitish Kumar Reddy, the rest found no answers to the numerous questions posed on a spicy Optus Stadium deck on Friday’s Day One of the first Test.

The rot set in the third over, after Jasprit Bumrah opted to bat, when Yashasvi Jaiswal drove Mitchell Starc on the up, a shot perfectly ‘on’ in India, but an invitation for disaster here, and unerringly picked out the gully fielder. Hazlewood then took over, luring a scoreless Devdutt Padikkal to nick off to Alex Carey and defeating Virat Kohli with excessive bounce that the No. 4 could only parry to first slip.