It could have been worse ...

A chastened Australia can console itself that the match finished better than it could have

Something, at least, was salvaged from the ashes of this conflagration. A few precious keepsakes, sooty but not charred beyond recognition, have been rescued from the embers. Without sounding like Pollyanna - or one of those cliched coaches  - there are positives for Australia to take away from the fourth day of a Test match, which had until this point been an unmitigated disaster.

Bowled out for 104 in the first innings, and bullied by the Indians in their second, the locals mustered 234 runs in the last.

They’d lost by 295 runs.