Injury-ravaged India pull off stunning victory to claim astonishing series win over Australia

India (336 and 329-7) beat Australia (369 and 294) by three wickets

Now English fans know what waking up to the 2005 Ashes would have felt like. Throughout this bleak English winter, mornings have been gladdened by the remarkable Australia-India series: a wildly oscillating set of matches that, from 36 all out to India’s stirring comeback victory in Melbourne and epic resistance with a patched-up side in Sydney, has shown Test cricket in all its technicolour.

Still, even three Tests brimming with drama, skill and bloody-mindedness were nothing to quite prepare for Brisbane. Australia had not been defeated here since 1988. India arrived with a team that was broken in body if not in spirit: missing almost an entire XI. They were deprived of their captain and best batsman, Virat Kohli, plus KL Rahul and Hanuma Vihari; their best two spinners, Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin; and their entire first-choice pace attack, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami. For good measure they also lost Umesh Yadav, their pace reserve. India’s five-man attack at Brisbane contained the sum total of four Test caps. One of those, Navdeep Saini, then went down injured in his eighth over.

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As Australia hit 369 and then India collapsed to 186 for six, finally, it seemed, their challenge would be ground down by the cold logic of what they faced: too many injuries, too much inexperience and the simple relentless of the Australian pace attack. This reckoned without the audacity of Washington Sundar and Shardul Thakur, a debutant and a man with a total of four runs in his Test career. The two withstood Australia for 36 overs to lift India close to parity - and with a route to getting out of Brisbane, aided by some showers, with their hold over the Border-Gavaskar Trophy still safely intact.

On the fourth morning, once again, India seemed unable to escape the cold logic of the challenge they faced. Australia had reached 89 without loss, a lead of 122 runs. Just as they had done with the bat, now Washington and Thakur combined to drag India back into the game with the ball, dismissing both openers in consecutive overs.

A day short of two months ago, during the quarantine period at the start of India’s long tour, Mohammed Siraj’s father died. Siraj was given the option of returning home, but a phone call with his mother persuaded him to stay in Australia and make good on his father’s dream that he would play Test cricket for India.

“You’ll end up with a five-wicket haul in this Test series,” an India coach told Siraj when he went to practice after his father’s death. “Your father’s dua (blessing) is with you.”

On the penultimate day of the Test series, Siraj fulfilled this prediction. His maiden Test five-wicket haul, including both Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith, limited Australia to 294, ensuring that they were bowled out rather than could declare at their pleasing. And so India needed 324 more runs on the final day of the series: a target that, despite Rishabh Pant’s belligerence on the final day in Sydney still seemed to defy logic.

But for all that India had been weighed down by injuries, there were glimpses of Australia being weighed down by the opposite problem: sheer exhaustion, with the identical attack deployed in each Test match. Just as they had done in Sydney, India sensed that, the deeper they could take their fourth innings, the more that Australian bodies would creak.

For Cheteshwar Pujara, this meant doubling down on the meticulous defence, judgement and courage that marks him out as perhaps the pre-eminent defensive batsman in the world. It took Pujara all of 97 balls to crawl into double figures; his five overs of defiance contained four more blows to the body - 11 - than boundaries.

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Pujara’s innings could have easily been mistaken for a side who gauged that a victory was outlandish. Instead, it was simply a recognition that India’s best chance lay in each batsman being true to their best selves. Twenty-one-year-old Shubman Gill razed Mitchell Starc for 14 runs in three balls to signal what was possible. Ajinkya Rahane bristled with intent in his own cameo. And then there was Pant, a player of such audacity and self-belief that the first scoring shot of his Test career was a six.

At the start of the series, Pant was left out of India’s XI. It seemed like a grotesque waste of one of the most effervescent talents in world cricket. Instead, this mismanagement was merely the prelude to Pant delivering consecutive mesmerising fourth-innings displays: 97 at Sydney, an innings that changed the complexion of the game and briefly gave India designs of chasing 407; and then this undefeated 89, again marked by treating Nathan Lyon with calculating disdain. Given his exploits in the IPL and on consecutive tours of Australia, Pant can already be considered a titan of two formats of the game aged 23.

As Pant thrashed Josh Hazlewood down the ground to seal India’s win, it was not just the denouement to one of the best Test series of all time. It felt like a win so seismic that it may herald the start of a new age in which India match being cricket’s superpower off the field with being the superpower on it.

Given the country’s population and fanaticism for the sport, India has long underperformed in cricket. “With this demographic and financial base, India should always and perennially have been the top team in all formats of the game,” the Indian historian and former cricket administrator Ram Guha writes in his new book The Commonwealth of Cricket.

Perhaps we are not too far from that moment. Consider the following XI, comprising India players unavailable or not selected - Rahul, Pritvhi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer, Kohli, Vihari, Jadeja, Ashwin, Wriddhiman Saha, Sharma, Shami and Bumrah. With Kohli and India’s entire first-choice bowling attack, the team would expect to beat the Indian side who conquered the Gabba. In home conditions, India could probably already field two separate XIs and be favourites against any other country in the world.

India's heist in Australia was a triumph for the ages. It might also be a sign of what is to come in the years ahead.