India did not have their regular captain Rohit Sharma. Three days before the Test, they lost No.3 Shubman Gill to a fractured thumb. They, anyway, came to Australia without one of their premiere seamers, Mohammed Shami. One could almost hear the murmurs of 4-0 and 5-0. Nobody realistically gave them a chance to compete, let alone win in Australia with a half-depleted side that had no official practice matches Down Under after suffering a historical (read embarrassing) 0-3 whitewash at home against New Zealand. But... and that's a big but. They had Jasprit Bumrah, easily the best all-format bowler of this generation. They had a sprawling youngster in Yashasvi Jaiswal. They had a wounded warrior in Virat Kohli. And above all, they had the belief that they could gun Australia down in their own backyard for the third time in a row.

Leading in Rohit's absence, Bumrah (5/30 & 3/42) put on a performance for the ages, backed up by an excellent show by batters Yashasvi Jaiswal (161), Virat Kohli (100*), and KL Rahul (77) in the second innings, as India started the Border-Gavaskar Trophy with a dominating 295-run victory - their biggest in terms of runs on Australian soil - at the Optus Stadium in Perth.

India's start was bumpy - right from the choice of their playing XI to the decision to bat first on fresh Perth pitch. Their batters were rolled over for 150 in the first innings but as India have done so often in Australia, they managed to roar back, wrestle the initiative and drive home the advantage in another victory that would find a glittering mention in the annals of Indian Test cricket history.

There was resistance from who else but Travis Head (89) in then second innings. Mitchell Marsh (47) and Alex Carey (36), too, frustrated India. But Bumrah and Siraj provided the goods with three wickets apiece. Needing 7 wickets at the start of Day 4, India bowled Australia out for 238 in a little more than a couple of sessions to take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series and, more importantly, keep their hopes of a third consecutive WTC final alive.

Bumrah ends Head's resistance

Jasprit Bumrah had a sly smile on his face after seeing the fall fly over Travis Head and Rishabh Pant and race to the boundary. The five wides did not threaten Head by any means. If anything, it posed a near-impossible challenge to wicketkeeper Pant's reflexes and athleticism. That is if you see the bouncer in isolation. In Test cricket, you are ill-advised to do that. With Bumrah, you are bound by an invisible law not to do that. Nothing that he does on the cricket field is irrelevant and can be taken out of context. The previous two deliveries of the same over were fullish and wide; Bumrah was trying to draw the left-hander forward, get him out of his comfort zone and then push him back again. When he did that, he completed the setup with what Sanjay Manjrekar described as “one of the greatest deliveries in modern-day cricket”. The ball angled in to Head, forced him to play at it with hard hands and moved away just enough to catch the outside edge.

Head, a thorn in India's flesh in all formats, was 11 away from his century when Bumrah produced that out of nowhere. That 39th over of Australia's second innings summed up this Test match quite well actually. Whenever Australia thought they had a chance of either pinning India down or coming back into the contest, they collided with Bumrah, with the result always going in the Indian's favour.

Siraj gives India a dream start before Sundar, Reddy chip in

There was another defining performance on Day 4 when the pitch had lost its venom. Mohammed Siraj put his hand up when Bumrah needed some support. He bounced out Usman Khawaja in his first over of the day and then came back in his second spell to dismiss Steve Smith with a beauty. There was not much that Smith could have done about that one from Siraj. It pitched around the off stump, shaped away, catching Smith in an in-between spot. All the Australian great could do was keep his bat hanging in the hope of contact. He did get that but not from the middle. The outside edge nestled into Pant's gloves easily.

Then came the biggest Australian partnership of the match. Head and Mitchell Marsh took advantage of the old Kookaburra and the inexperienced India bowling that briefly looked a bit clueless after Bumrah and Siraj were done.

A Bumrah special was needed to stop Head's march. Once Head was out of the way, things once again fell into place for India. Nitish Kumar Reddy got his first Test wicket as Marsh dragged one back onto his stumps three short of his fifty.

Off-spinning all-rounder Washington Sundar, picked ahead of Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja in this Test, repaid the captain's faith with a couple of strikes in the last session on Sunday before Harshit Rana cleaned up Alex Carey (36) to finish off the match.

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