How quickly everything can change after a couple of days of Test cricket.

After India comprehensively beat down Australia in Perth, premature obituaries were being written about the home side daily.

Pat Cummins had lost his zip, Marnus Labuschagne was done as a Test cricketer, Australia was a team over the hill. All hot takes, all silenced to some degree.

As it turned out, reports of Australia's demise were greatly exaggerated, and now we head to Brisbane with the series locked at one apiece.

After the Adelaide Test, Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle compared this five-Test series between cricket's two behemoths to a five-setter at a grand slam tournament, and it is an incredibly accurate comparison.

Novak Djokovic has appeared in the most grand slam finals of anyone in the history of tennis. Of Djokovic's 37 grand slam finals, he has emerged the victor in 24 of them, more than any men's player ever.

Save for a few beatdowns where he's proved himself to be in a different stratosphere to many a helpless opponent, Djokovic has often been forced to dig deep with the marbles up for grabs.

At different times during those 24 victorious finals, Djokovic has looked dead in the water early before coming back with renewed vigour in the very next set. He's shown himself to have an extremely short memory following poor stretches of play and it's one of many traits that make him an all-timer. Where other players might wallow over key points or rallies they've lost, Djokovic simply leaves it in the past and marches on.

Having dropped the second set, it is now time for India's players to find their Djokovic-like intestinal fortitude as they return to the scene of their greatest overseas Test triumph.

Just as Australia's resounding win in Adelaide doesn't suddenly put to bed all the questions surrounding the team, Perth didn't mean India's flaws all magically disappeared either. The loss in Adelaide showed just as much.

Let's start with the batting.

India is in an extended slump as an entire team with the willow, with recent numbers showing the second innings in Perth is more an aberration rather than a return to the norm.

The 6-487 the tourists scored in Perth against a weary Australian attack is only their second score of over 300 in their last 10 innings. The other one came an innings after they were rolled for 46 by New Zealand in Bengaluru.

Yashasvi Jaiswal's arrival has been a godsend for this aging line-up, but with it has come an unhealthy reliance on the 22-year-old batting tyro.

India has been blessed by Jaiswal being so prolific to open his Test career. Almost half of his 30 innings have resulted in either a half-century or a century, and as he showed in Perth, when Jaiswal crosses the three-figure mark, he goes big. All four of his centuries have ended with scores of over 150.

Masked by Jaiswal's brilliance is the ugly truth about India's batting line-up — it flounders if he does not fire, and has done for a few years now.

Jaiswal has scored 30 or less in 15 of his 30 Test innings, and only once has India scored over 300 on these occasions. Of the 15 innings, India lost all 10 wickets in 13. In these 13 innings, the average team score is 174.38. That simply won't get the job done in Australia.

If Jaiswal's not scoring the bulk of the runs, who else will?

Virat Kohli looked to have broken out of an extended form slump with a century in Perth, but like his team, that knock looks more like an aberration as well.

The Kohli we saw in Adelaide was the same Kohli we've seen now for the best part of five years, nicking balls outside his off stump over and over again. The scouting report is out on how to unravel the Indian master.

Test centuries against Australia are the hardest to come by, particularly in Australia, so what Kohli did in Perth shouldn't be sneezed at. But coming in at 2-275 with his side leading by 321 runs against an attack that had already hurtled down 505 deliveries was the perfect environment for Kohli to pad his stats, and credit to him for taking advantage of the conditions.

However, for India to win this series, it needs the Kohli that churned out centuries when Tests were on the line in the toughest of conditions, the Kohli that scored 153 out of his team's 307 runs against a South African attack at Centurion featuring the names Morkel, Philander and Rabada in 2018.

It is worth noting that Kohli's stats when he is not India's Test captain pale in comparison to his numbers while leading his country. He averaged 54.80 with 20 centuries as skipper in 68 Tests, compared to averaging 38.81 with 10 centuries while not skipper. The average drops to 36.42 under Rohit Sharma's reign over the last two years.

While captaincy can often be a burden for players, leading India from the front seemed to almost always bring out the best in Kohli. The higher the stakes, the better he played. The tourists desperately need that version of him to walk through the door again. Does that version of him exist anymore? There is a mountain of evidence that keeps building which suggests it does not.

Speaking of India's current skipper, he's become a bit of an elephant in the room. India's win in Perth without Sharma had a real case of Ewing Theory about it.

The Ewing Theory is a basketball theory that suggests some star players improve their team's performance when they do not play. It is named after New York Knicks legend Patrick Ewing, whose team went on a Cinderella run to the 1999 NBA Finals in his absence.

That's not to say Sharma is a bad captain. He led his side to a T20 World Cup title just months ago, and also made the final in the 50-over World Cup and the World Test Championship. You don't achieve those things by being a poor leader, even if you inherit a ready-made winning machine from Kohli.

However, India seemed a little fresher under Jasprit Bumrah's leadership in Perth, particularly in the field. His bowling changes were proactive and worked like a charm, the field placements were generally quite attacking, and the timing of his declaration in the second innings was spot on.

It was a stark contrast to what we saw in Adelaide, where Sharma curiously took Bumrah out of the attack when Australia's eventual centurion, Travis Head, came to the crease. Late on day one as Australia saw off the new ball, commentators wondered where Ravichandran Ashwin, he of 537 Test wickets, had gone, only for Ashwin to bowl one over before the close of play.

It shouldn't be any surprise that Sharma looked scratchy in his two innings in Adelaide. Since arriving in Australia he's scored a combined 12 runs in three innings if you include a warm-up match against the Prime Minister's XI. Adelaide was his first Test match in over a month.

What is more worrying for India is if you're hoping for an uptick in Sharma's form, then Australia is just about the unlikeliest place for it to happen.

The Indian captain's overall Test numbers are still largely excellent, but what is lost in them is a record away from India that is distinctly below par.

In 29 Tests away from home, Sharma has scored just two centuries, averaging 32.44, nine runs below his career average. His record is even poorer in Australia, where he's scored just three half-centuries in eight Tests at an average of 27.80. He last scored a Test century away from India in July 2023 against the West Indies.

Whether Sharma remains at number six or reclaims his opening spot from KL Rahul remains a subplot to keep an eye on for the remainder of the series. Is he better off attacking the new ball at the top of the order rather than trying to prod and poke later on in the innings? Which of these will get him back into form quicker?

Central to India's two series wins on its last two trips to Australia was its number three, Cheteshwar Pujara.

Pujara averaged 47.28 in 11 Tests Down Under across three tours, but the figure that is more telling on the role he played is his strike rate of 37.37 in those Tests, well below his mark of 49.37 at home.

Nothing about Pujara's game was sexy, but he ate up ball after ball after ball, wearing out Australia's pacemen while allowing the likes of a prime Kohli and a baby Rishabh Pant to stack runs around him. When India chased down 329 at the Gabba last time out, Pant's unbeaten 89 came after Pujara had eaten up 211 balls and 314 minutes to score 56.

India needs to figure out who will play the Pujara role this time. The early returns seem to suggest Rahul is the most likely candidate, rather than the flashy Jaiswal, Pant or Shubman Gill.

India's batters being collectively out of form means the pressure on the seemingly indefatigable Bumrah is even greater.

The tourists have picked up 30 wickets so far in the two Tests this series, and Bumrah has 12 of them. Asking him to shoulder that amount of responsibility for five Tests is a plan fraught with danger and downright unsustainable, even for a generational bowler like Bumrah.

There was a reason hearts collectively went in mouths around the entire ground — and probably all of India — on day two in Adelaide when Bumrah pulled up with a cramp and crumpled to the turf to get some physio work done.

As the physio worked on his groins, there was Ravindra Jadeja massaging Bumrah's golden right shoulder. If he goes down at some point during this series, India's hopes of retaining the Border-Gavaskar Trophy go with him.

Like the batters have done with Jaiswal, Bumrah's excellence away from home has resulted in an unhealthy reliance on him.

It was obvious in Adelaide as Australia's batters were put to the test in Bumrah's spells while making hay at the other end.

Of 56 bowling innings outside of India, Bumrah has picked up multiple wickets in 41 of them, a ridiculous feat in itself. The problem is if he doesn't take multiple wickets, usually it results in opposition teams running up the score.

That Australia was able to score 337 in Adelaide while Bumrah still looked mostly unplayable was both an example of how awesome Travis Head's knock was and also an indictment on the rest of India's attack, which looked toothless for large spells.

Mohammed Siraj has proved himself to be a decent foil for Bumrah, picking up 65 wickets at an average of 26.73 outside of India, but the third seamer spot remains problematic.

In an ideal world, India's other fast bowling Mohammed, Shami, slots straight back in and all is well. However, expecting Shami, who has not played a Test since June 2023, to rocket down 20 overs per innings in the next three Tests seems like an unrealistic and unfair ask of a player who has just turned 34 and is coming off ankle surgery.

Harshit Rana has the pace to perhaps one day be the leader of India's Test attack, but he remains incredibly raw. The 22-year-old's four wickets in this series have come at 50.75 runs apiece.

A stat that is even more damning is his economy rate of 4.51. India needs their third paceman to be able to tie up an end while Siraj and Bumrah go in for the kill. If it is not Shami, it's likely India gives Rana a spell in Brisbane in favour of either Akash Deep or Prasidh Krishna.

Having been smashed in the second set, as per Bhogle's analogy, India now prepares to get back out on the court for the third set, which often proves to be pivotal in grand slam finals that are tied one-all. They'll come out having maybe thrown a racquet or two in the locker room out of frustration between sets.

The good news if you're in the Indian camp is that, like Djokovic in all those finals, India has also shown a tremendous ability to bounce back from adversity. If Gautam Gambhir needs any inspiration for his side, he only needs to look back at what happened after India lost in Adelaide on the last tour of Australia.

No one predicted India would go on to win that series, yet they produced diamonds under immense pressure.

You'd be a brave punter to bet against them doing it again. But they will have to reverse some worrying trends to bounce back.

Throughout the summer, we'll look back at some of the best stories and share our own favourite moments from Australia and India's cricket history.

Join us to continue the conversation on our live blogs and on the radio over the summer before the readers' top 10 is revealed ahead of the fifth Test at the SCG from January 3.

Select five options to make sure your vote is counted.