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Australia can come away from their series defeat in India with their heads held high.
That’s not something we thought that we would be able to say midway through the series, when Australia had been humbled on bunsen-burner tracks in Nagpur and Delhi.
Yet the stunning third-Test victory in Indore, played on arguably the most egregious dust-bowl of the lot, put a very different slant on what had been a one-sided series.
Suddenly, memories popped up of the mid-point of that second Test in Delhi, where Australia were actually on top for long periods.
Rohit Sharma has repeatedly said that he was most proud of the way his team fought back after being behind the game for so long to win at the Arun Jaitley Stadium and again highlighted that as the key moment in the series.
But did India win that match, or did Australia sweep it away in 90 minutes of abject madness in the Indian capital?
It would have been easy for Australia to completely throw in the towel from that point on, railing against the fact that nobody wins in India and that their entire pre-tour plan was crashing in around their ears.
With Pat Cummins’s heartbreaking departure from the team, alongside veteran opener David Warner and pace option Josh Hazlewood, Australia should have been in disarray.
Instead, with backs against the wall, Australia fought back.
Not only that, they did it by finding solutions to their multitude of problems.
Travis Head’s incomprehensible omission from the first Test had already been rectified in Delhi, but his promotion to the top of the order ensured Australia’s batting had depth absent in Tests one and two.
His presence at the top of the order might not be a long-term solution, but his inclusion in the team simply cannot be questioned again given the continuation of his superb home form in India and the way he led Australia to victory in Indore.
The injury to Cameron Green and his subsequent absence from the opening exchanges of the tour could not be helped, but when he came back, that balance was restored and Australia prospered.
Green’s century in Ahmedabad was the realisation of his abundant promise with the bat that had, as yet, been unfulfilled.
The big all-rounder showed just how invaluable he is, not just as a viable pace option (despite him taking 0-104 from his 20 bowling overs in the series) but as a middle-order batter who can pick up the pieces and dig in for long periods.
Now that he has that Test century-shaped monkey off his back, he should carry a huge amount of confidence into the Ashes.
So too will spinners Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann.
Both provided able assistance to Nathan Lyon, so much so that Raul Dravid said Australia’s spin attack was “exceptional” and the best India had faced at home since England’s Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann helped England to victory in 2012.
They won’t be used in England, of course, but it shows the cupboard is not bare for when Lyon does decide he can’t haul his body through any more 65-over efforts.
This Australian team is only the third in the past decade to even win a Test in India.
That in itself should make everyone sit up and take note that they are far from the home-track bullies they are sometimes made out to be.
What would Ben do?
In the end, the low-key finale to what had been an enthralling series was something of a come down.
Vast banks of empty seats looked on at India’s part-time spinners flexing their bowling arms and two of Australia’s most accomplished batters went through the motions of defending them back down the pitch.
Those empty seats should serve as a warning that administrators might want Tests to go for five days, but fans want a contest.
Consider the anticlimax well and truly peaked.
For while this parody of a conclusion was playing out at the Narendra Modi Stadium, just hours earlier, Sri Lanka and New Zealand were completing a thrilling, final-ball epic in which both teams sacrificed everything to produce a result in Christchurch.
This, just a week after those same New Zealanders beat England’s new breed in a match that also went down to the wire in Wellington.
It might not be appropriate to bring Baz Ball’s thrill-a-minute style to Ahmedabad’s placidity, but in a matter of months Australia are going to have to front up to it anyway.
If we are to be super critical, we could say that Australia should have forced the issue to try and get a victory in this match that would have drawn the series.
Why? Because that what England would have done and, indeed, have done over the past 12 months.
England’s success under Brendan McCullum perhaps are not so entrenched that when faced with the prospect of a bore-draw that captains and coaches are not immediately asking themselves WWBD? — where the B could stand for Brendon or Ben Stokes.
But perhaps they should start to.
Because, after Australia meets India again in what will be very different conditions for the World Test Championship final at The Oval in early June, they will come up against an England team that has made a point of saying are not interested in drawing matches.
It may be that up against one of the world’s most talented teams, that gung-ho approach will come unstuck more often than England’s current record of two defeats in 12 matches would let on.
It may be, that on pitches that flatten after an initial period of seam-friendly swing, England’s carefree attitude to moving the game forward will blow Australia away.
But that’s an issue for June.
Record books rarely contain much nuance and, for this series, that is all that needs to be said.
Even though they have had to be rewritten a handful of times during this series, the stark truth of it will be laid out forever in the annals: India retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2-1.
But Australia will know they’re close and that knowledge should see them do well in England later in the year.
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