As India’s No.11 batsman Sreesanth continued his verbal warfare with the Aussies despite being woefully ill-equipped to counter the No.1 Aussie bowler Johnson, the left-arm pacer, the day’s meaningless final moments typified the mood of this series so far.

India’s new aggressive team can mouth smart lines about their fire-to-fire attitude and indulge in staring sessions on the field but the bottomline is this remains a series between the visiting world champions and home boys who didn’t even clear the first hurdle.

This inequality was witnessed several times during the first full game after India’s new-found Twenty20 world champion status. They got the early breakthrough and even followed that up by taking two more wickets — one of them being that of last game’s century star Michael Clarke — to push Australia to 66/3 in 15.3 overs, but failed to make further inroads. The Aussies, meanwhile, had the Indians on the ropes early and delivered constant blows to accomplish a quick KO.

Traditionally, a spin-friendly track is seen as a surface that the Indians prefer and that was the reason they had two offies — Harbhajan Singh and Ramesh Powar — in the playing XI today. But what went unnoticed on match-eve was the presence of left-arm chinaman specialist Brad Hogg in the rival camp. And the fact that his 21 wickets at an average of 15.80 runs in West Indies earlier this year had got him the official status of the most deadliest ODI spinner.

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