What did India not do ahead of the World Test Championship final that Australia did, eventually to pull it off with the effortless ease of a walk in the park? That is what we have begun asking ourselves more than half-way into the week after the pratfall, which has been viewed, reviewed and thought endlessly of. And we have come to be told that, quite unlike those blokes Down Under, we do not take stock of things periodically to add fresh strength to our squad, thereby making sure of a conveyor-belt supply of champions in the making.

It is as if our bigshots only need to frequently sit together and chew the cud and gently will drop the protégé who turns the world upside down. Add, perhaps, Noam Chomsky’s analytical powers to Sherlock Holmes’ hawk eye and talent cannot fail to end up in the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s net with a happy-ever-after note. Utopian thinking that, but what reality suggests is that no one, experts included, would have touted this Open Sesame before the summit showdown of the global contest.

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It was a time overshadowed by the Indian Premier League, when all our geese were swans preening and turning heads, out there in the middle or on the dance floor after the hurly-burly was done. That was not when India knew that Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma could in a more demanding format turn out to be just as fallible as any batsman obliged to switch from one mode to another. The sternest of commentators, however authoritative, will only gush during a game which is required to be sold with what is called the feel-good factor dominating it. John Arlott or Christopher MartinJenkins would have been surplus to its cast of characters.

There is more to it. It is only a handful of Indian cricketers who have said since the Oval ignominy they could have done with four weeks of preparation for the Test match against Australia, which they were denied as the interregnum between the IPL and the five-day game was short. It was what New Zealand did two years earlier before taking on India in the first WTC final, their nose-to-the-grindstone application contrasted sharply with the Indians’ roving requirements under the pressure of the IPL schedule. It is a bit of all right that some of the leading lights who have also conceded that it will always be like this which should entail a fresh look at IPL’s minutiae so India do not end up being shortchanged.

But so they have done it twice in a row because the cricket board is appreciably more interested in the takings from the IPL. All but two of the Australians, Cameron Green and David Warner, skipped it and all but one of the Indians, Cheteswar Pujara, played it. You can put two and two together without arriving at 400.