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The Indians have arrived, full of confidence after whitewashing Sri Lanka 5-0 in ODIs.
I realise ODIs are not Tests, and that this victory was at home and not away, but still they are on a high.
They will play the first of their 2 two-day tour matches against a Cricket Australia XI today at Gliderol Stadium in Adelaide.
Their captain and wicketkeeper MS Dhoni will join the squad later, with Virat Kohli to captain the side in the first Test in Brisbane on December 4.
Below is their squad for the Test series.
Opening batsmen: Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma, Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane.
Middle order bats: Virat Kohli (acting captain), Cheteshwar Pujara, Suresh Raina and Lokesh Rahul.
Spinners who can bat: Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, and leg-spinner Karn Sharma.
Fast-medium/medium pacers: Ishant Sharma, Varun Aaron, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav.
Wicketkeepers: Writhiman Saha and Naman Ojha (who can bat). Dhoni will take on gloves and leadership later on.
Five pace men and three spinners? Appears unIndian!
Although Kohli, Pujara, Dhawan (who averages 187.00 against Australia in Test), Rohit Sharma, Vijay, Rahane and Raina are capable batsmen, will they take over from master bats Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and VVS Laxman?
I would like to single out the in-form batsman Rohit Sharma, who defeated Sri Lanka off his own bat in a one-day international in Kolkata on November 15.
His individual hurricane knock of 264 beat Sri Lanka (251 all out) as he smashed 33 fours and 9 sixes. He hit 12 fours and 16 sixes in his 209 against Australia in Bangalore on November 2, 2013. His 33 fours in 2014 and 16 sixes in 2013 are ODI records.
Previously, Australia’s Shane Watson held the record for hitting most sixes (15), against Bangladesh at Dhaka on 11 April 2011 when scoring an unbeaten 185.
Sharma is the only player to hit two double centuries in ODIs. Not that he is only an ODI specialist.
On debut against the West Indies in 2013 he scored 177 in Kolkata, followed by an unbeaten 111 in Mumbai. He is one of eight batsmen to score centuries in his first two Tests.
He is the only player to follow his ODI double ton with centuries in his first two Tests. He also became the 11th player to score three hundreds in three successive international innings, one of them being a double.
Three of them – the great Garry Sobers from West Indies, England’s Graham Gooch and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara – started with a triple-century.
Sobers achieved this in the Kingston (365 not out) and Georgetown (125 and 109 not out) Tests against Pakistan in 1958. Gooch emulated this feat in two successive Tests at Lord’s (333 and 123) and Manchester (116) against India in 1990.
Sangakkara scored 319 and 105 against Bangladesh at Chittagong in February 2014, followed by 147 in his next Test against England at Lord’s four months later.
Gooch and Sangakkara are the only batsmen to have recorded a triple century and a century in the same Test, informs Rajesh Kumar – the top cricket statistician from India.
Thus Rohit Sharma can shine out in both versions of the game.
Two batsmen have done well against Australia at Test level, Kohli scoring 584 runs at 44.92 in eight Tests, and the stylish Pujara averaging 70.71 when stroking 495 runs in five Tests against Australia.
In Australia Kohli has scored 300 runs at 37.50 in four Tests in 2011-12, his last four innings being 44 and 75 in the Perth Test, followed by 116 and 22 run out in the final Test in Adelaide.
In his last international against Sri Lanka at Ranchi last week he scored an unbeaten 139 as he led India to a 5-0 win.
He was one Indian batsman to show some gumption, although India was whitewashed 0-4 in Australia in 2011-12.
He gave back to the crowd what he received.
With five seamers, India seems determined to take Mitchell Johnson head on.
And with Kohli as the leader and Rohit Sharma as the hit man there won’t be any abject surrender 2011-12 style.