Kohli, facing Australian spearhead Patrick Cummins, dispatched his first delivery past the bowler, and that, one sensed, was on the way to being that.

All day, the Australians had tilted towards a defensive mode, their pessimism about the pitch outweighing any optimism they might have felt over India’s contentious selection of two new openers.

The short ball was used as a weapon, but only in bursts, Cummins and Mitchell Starc targeting the batsmen’s ribs with leg-theory fields. It was a good enough ploy to capture Hanuma Vihari, promoted from No.6, and Mayank Agarwal, promoted from the Ranji Trophy, but by afternoon both openers had done a job, Vihari seeing out the first hour and Agarwal producing a valuable 76 on debut.

Agarwal even unfurled a Kohli tasting menu of top-spinning cover drives to whet the appetite for the real thing.

Part of Kohli’s magnetism lies in how he can prowl like a lion and yet wait like a spider. His balance of enraged aggression and cool patience plays games with opposing captains and bowlers, who must think they can lure a hot-headed error by playing on his all-too-manifest ego.

Kohli's balance of enraged aggression and cool patience plays games with opposing captains and bowlers.

The transparent plan here was to bowl outside his off-stump, exhaust his self-restraint and get him caught driving at a wide one.

The Australian seamers all ploughed this furrow and found that Kohli could not be tempted, or at least not often and not fatally. At the other end, Cheteshwar Pujara treated temptation with his customary disdain. Plenty of leftovers, you suspect, remain from his Christmas table.

More than 73,000 people, a bigger crowd than had ever turned out for an India-Australia Test match in this country, had come to see Kohli, and their hopes can be further satisfied by the fact that he had to fight for his runs. It was tough, gnarled Test cricket, clearly differentiated from the night-time fare.

Kohli found himself in the battle of, and for, the series. Cummins nearly bowled him off the inside edge. An edge off Josh Hazlewood fell short of slip. Starc, used in micro-doses, cut back the second new ball between bat and stumps and drew a tired late flash.

Mitchell Marsh, whose return to Test cricket was applauded by the Australian crowd but booed by the Victorians, proved a wise replacement for Peter Handscomb, delivering 15 tight overs.

The low-bouncing pitch deprived Nathan Lyon of his main weapon, the awkward thigh-high bounce he exploited in Adelaide and Perth, and he was relegated to a containing role. A poor video referral from Lyon’s lbw appeal measured nothing so much as the creep of Australia’s desperation to get rid of Kohli.

By this summer’s high standards, the Australians were ragged in the field. Throws to Tim Paine were short, wide and in one case high overhead, giving away an overthrow.

Travis Head yielded a boundary with a careless backhand flick. Chances weren’t dropped, but somehow failed to quite go to the eager hands seen in the first two Test matches.

With an inexperienced team, so many days of intense cricket compressed into December was always going to produce fatigue. The forecast hot days will tell if this reaches into Australia’s batting.

But first their bowlers will have to get through Kohli, who showed no signs of relenting. Indeed, the tighter things got, the more his jaw firmed. On this pitch, with bowlers able to create few chances, only failures of concentration from the batsmen will provide wickets.

As the shadows lengthened, Kohli played out the second new ball like a man ready to leave his assault till morning, if he can bear to wait that long.