It was good for any cricket lover’s soul to see the game back and on centre stage.
That the Adelaide contest turned out to be an excellent advert for the sport was pleasing but not a necessity.
Things have to move on, of course they do, and when a few unpleasant words were exchanged over not much it showed the game wanting to get back to what we all know, free from any falsified façade.
My eye, as it always is, was drawn to the batsmanship on offer and there was plenty to admire.
David Warner – the best going around at the minute – was excellent, Virat Kohli, who was invisible on these shores a few months ago, not too far behind, and there were also less-than-shabby supporting roles played by Steve Smith, Michael Clarke, Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara.
But it is runs that set up games and wickets which provide the fuel for victories and with this in mind the star performer was Nathan Lyon.
I’ll resist the urge to say I told you so, but, well you can finish this sentence yourselves.
Fresh off a chastening series in the UAE where Pakistan’s top order toyed with his offerings, Lyon, with his pace-bowling colleagues nullified to some extent by the lack of pace available, was the difference.
And it was two second-innings dismissals – Pujara caught behind and Rohit Sharma taken at leg-slip – which stood out like a beacon.
Both from nicely flighted deliveries, the former took Pujara’s outside edge from a tentative prod forward, and the latter spat out of the footmarks to find the glove. Classic off-spinning on a fifth day surface and ample evidence that Lyon is no one-trick pony.
Both edges of the bat were being threatened and this is precisely what Lyon’s game has been lacking.
That the side he plays in contains a left-arm seamer – and two for Brisbane – adds to the mixture and if the Indians persist in bowling round the wicket to Warner then more fool them.
There is always the option of reverting to old ways, and Lyon has shown that he can do an effective job from the alternative side of the stumps, but his performance in Adelaide should be his lightbulb moment.
For whatever reason criticism of Lyon has been fierce, with some justified and some a distance wide of the mark, the main problem being that expectations were generally unrealistic.
Finger spin on unresponsive pitches is a difficult job and the failure to close out a couple of Test matches has been transformed into a rather large stick with which to beat him.
The 12-wicket haul in the series opener should – and I say should but don’t hold your breath – lead to a reduction in the output of the cynics.
Lyon was outstanding and he did it all from over the wicket. It’s not a coincidence.
The mammoth rise of Jake Fraser-McGurk - his enormous potential and the destructive shot-making that he possesses makes him a very tempting option.
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