For an optimistic half an hour, clapped on eagerly by Adelaide Oval's final day faithful, it looked as though Nathan Lyon was going to be able to live up to his fourth evening talk of heroes.
Aided by Josh Hazlewood, he guided Australia to within 32 runs of the most improbable result, before Lyon instead joined another offspinner, Tim May, in being at the non-striker's end for a narrow defeat in an Adelaide Test. Twenty-five years ago, May and Craig McDermott took Australia within two runs of West Indies; this time around the margin was wider, but the result equally momentous.
For decades, Australia's home-ground advantage has never been more acute than against India. Never before had an Indian touring team won the opening match of a series down under, and only twice since 1988 against anyone have Australia lost. The fact that both these defeats, in Perth and Adelaide, have taken place away from the traditional opening fixture at the Gabba will be the source of a debate about cricket economics versus Australian team performance, but you also have to factor in this line-up's loss of Steven Smith and David Warner.
In addition to the numbness of defeat, the Australians had to cope with a more piercing feeling in the shape of a blow to the captain Tim Paine, resurrecting years of trouble with his right index finger. Paine's insistence that the finger is "fine" rather resembled the "fit to play" insistence of a battered AFL player in the September finals, but it was also in keeping with the level of determination and "fight" expected of the team by Paine himself and the coach Justin Langer. These qualities were very much on display as the chase crept closer to a target that always seemed to be narrowly out of reach, as India's unflagging bowlers conjured just enough false shots or wicket-taking balls.
For Paine, the performance of the lower order in particular, putting on stands of 31, 41, 31 and 32 for the final four wickets, provided the whole team with sizeable evidence of what can be achieved by an even effort. Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc also contributed significantly, the former keeping out 168 balls across the match, third-most among the whole Australian XI after Travis Head and Shaun Marsh. "Our whole bowling attack, you see those four together, you can see how much playing for Australia means to them," Paine said. "Whether they've got the bat, ball, in the field, you can't question those four guys' commitment. They have a red hot crack for every single ball.
"If you want to be a good team you've got to be hard to beat and today we were hard to beat, I think we made India work harder than they thought they were going to have to work." Australia captain Tim Paine
"That's what we're building to. That's the style of cricket we want to play. They're some of our more experienced players, I think the more they do that, the more it will rub off on the rest of this group. Couldn't question any of those guys. I don't think many people thought we'd get as close as we did today and certainly didn't think we'd win but we have a lot of faith particularly in our lower order we bat pretty deep and Lyno [Nathan Lyon] is getting better all the time and those four or five have a crack when they in the middle.
"It showed that anything is possible if you are prepared to stick it out and face a lot of balls it can change quickly, but we couldn't quite get there. If you want to be a good team you have got to be hard to beat and today we were hard to beat, I think we made India work harder than they thought they were going to have to work, but sitting back now it is a huge opportunity because we didn't cash in in the first innings and didn't have batters out there today when they were tiring. Had we have had either of those we would have won this Test match so it's pretty hard to take."
Frustrated as he was by the result, Paine maintained his views about how he and Langer were trying to adjust the way the Australian team played. There were moments of tension and hostility throughout the match, not least Ishant Sharma's steepling bouncer and in-the-face celebration to defeat Travis Head on the final morning - Curtly Ambrose and Merv Hughes rolled into one. But the home side were composed throughout, with their worst moments of excess limited to a handful of extravagant or unwise shot choices.
ALSO READ: Kohli reveals how the no-balls 'pissed off' Ishant
"I thought it was fine. I thought it was played in good spirits. I don't know about them. We didn't pay any attention to them and we won't be for the whole series. We can only concentrate on the brand and style of cricket we want to play," Paine said. "From a cricket point of view we've got some things we need to tighten up and some areas we know we can. I thought today was a nice snapshot of the way we want to go about it. I thought we fought really hard, never gave in, you don't have to talk rubbish and carry on like a pork chop to prove that."
That snapshot, of course, will be part of a wider picture, and in this sense there was one element of the Adelaide Test that did finish in an Australian victory. In terms of total balls faced, the Australians finished with 216.3 overs batted as against India's 198.5 - a tally based largely on the obduracy of Cheteshwar Pujara, comfortably the highest scorer in the match. There were issues in terms of Australian shot selection, and also finding the right balance between defence and attack, demonstrated by the range of ways in which they attempted to deal with R Ashwin. But the overall impression was of a team trying, despite obvious limitations, to play a wider game.
"We expect this series to be really tight," Paine said. "So I think days like today when you make their fast bowlers come back two, three, four more times than they thought they probably had to. That can have a really telling impact on the back end of a big series, when it's four Tests.
"There's a lot of cricket to be played and I thought you could see signs of their attack wearying this afternoon. So it's a really key element for us, to get lots of overs into them. And I'm sure India are the same with us, they want to see our fast bowlers bowl a hell of a lot of overs. It's going to be good to get to Perth and see who backs up better."
Over the entire history of Test matches, 54.43% of series have been won by the team facing more balls. It's the sort of marginal gain that will be critical to this series, and to Australia's fortunes until Smith and Warner return. In that sense, at least, Lyon and Hazlewood's ultimately failed effort on the final afternoon may prove more useful to the final outcome than they think right now.