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At the end of the first day of play, it is the home side that is firmly in control, and India that is now reduced to chasing the game.
So much for 'momentum', a word much favoured by commentators, and a phenomenon for which no realistic measure exists.
India came into the second Test -- a day/night affair with the pink ball at the Adelaide Oval -- with the wind in its sails, on the back of a thumping win at Perth.
And yet, at the end of the first day of play, it is the home side that is firmly in control, and India that is now reduced to chasing the game.
Perth and Adelaide were as different as it was possible to be. In Perth, the home bowlers seemed clueless -- their lines too wide, their lengths too short to trouble the Indian batters, the whole compounded by having to bowl on a pitch where they couldn't generate much movement.
Here, the Aussie bowlers put it all together, on the back of the inevitable Mitchell Starc masterclass in how to bowl in conditions that aided swing and seam.
The toss was the only thing that went right for India -- on a track where teams batting first have a distinct advantage, India got first strike, but then it all went downhill from there.
Starc took out Perth centurion Yashavi Jaiswal with the very first ball of the match -- a full length, inswinging delivery pitching on leg and middle and straightening to trap the batter plumb in front.
There was a revival of sorts in the form of a 69-run partnership for the second wicket between K L Rahul and Shubman Gill, both of whom looked in good touch.
In one manic period before lunch, though, Starc in his second spell got one to lift at Rahul just outside his off stump -- the inevitable edge was taken, and that wicket triggered a collapse with Gill, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma falling in quick succession.
Nitish Kumar Reddy was the only other Indian batter to impress, playing with a great deal of correctness as long as Rishabh Pant and R Ashwin were at the other end, but then opening out once he was left with the tail.
180 all out, after opting to bat first, was underwhelming -- and the credit goes to Australia's frontline quicks.
Starc was excellent throughout; Scott Boland ensured that the home side didn't feel Josh Hazelwood's absence too much; and Pat Cummins produced a hostile spell after the lunch break to take out the dangerous-looking Pant.
When India -- read Jasprit Bumrah -- took Usman Khawaja's wicket as early as the 11th over, with just 24 runs on the board, it seemed like India had the chance to repeat the Perth performance.
Nathan McSweeney was playing just his third innings as opener, and Marnus Labuschagne's form and fitness to be in the team had been a constant topic of discussion in the interim between the two Tests.
To their credit, both batters hung tough, leaving more deliveries than they played, getting their eye in gradually, and beginning to look good in the last hour of the final session.
India's bowling attack contributed to the team's problems, by being too short too often, and not attacking the stumps enough -- a stat worth noting is that the Aussie batters comfortably left 45 percent of the balls that were bowled to them.
At close, Australia was 86/1, with nine wickets in hand and the deficit reduced to under the hundred run mark.
If the two not-out batters can negotiate the threat of Bumrah and Mohammad Siraj in the first hour on Saturday morning, the home side will boss the game, while the Indians will be reduced to playing catch up.
For India, the question is whether the bowlers can reset their lines and lengths overnight; one ray of light is that the only over Ashwin bowled saw the ball grip and turn sharply off the deck.
Tomorrow should, one way or other, decide the course of this contest.
Prem Panicker discusses all the action from the first day of the Adelaide Test with Hemant Waje.
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