In the scheme of a tour that could peak at a mammoth four-and-a-half months, a nine-hour delay in the arrival of India's team will be remembered as much as a single leg-bye midway through the ensuing Test series.
But in the short-term it reaffirmed that when it comes to off-field cricket matters Indians march to the beat of their own drum.
Cricket Australia staff were waiting in the arrivals hall of Adelaide Airport on Saturday for a flight from Singapore scheduled to carry the Indians. Outnumbering the officials were police seconded to ensure the safe passage of the cricketers.
When only a trickle of passengers were yet to clear the one-way doors and there was no sign of any Indian blazers it became apparent, after an impromptu meeting between an airline official, the CA staff and police, that the Indians were still more than an hour away from leaving their transit point of Singapore and instead of a 9.20am arrival were scheduled to touch down in Adelaide at 6pm.
The team, led by Virat Kohli, in place of injured captain M. S. Dhoni, who won't play until the second Test, finally arrived just after 5pm, an hour ahead of (the revised) schedule.
Just under half of the 19-man squad were in Australia three years ago for the 0-4 mauling. While greats such as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VV. S. Laxman have since retired, the visitors are not light on batting talent.
As well as the combative Kohli, who has just emerged from arguably the worst slump of his impressive career, and hard-nosed Cheteshwar Pujara, India has free-flowing batsmen such as Shikhar Dhawan, Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma, the latter fresh from his world-record one-day knock of 264.
This summer was initially scheduled to be an Ashes summer, until England requested that series be brought forward a year (to last summer). Their rationale was that a month-long preparation for the Ashes, followed by a tri-series against the host and India and the World Cup, would have its players away from home for five months, a period not unusual two or more decades ago but now, in the days of tighter fixtures, seen as extreme.
India's task is only slightly less onerous. While it will play only four Tests, and is satisfied with two two-day practice matches before the series compared with England having a three-dayer and two four-dayers last year, if it plays to expectations in the one-day tri-series after the Tests and then the World Cup the core of its team will almost certainly be in Australia until the end of March.
One possible, albeit unlikely alternative could be that should they not make the tri-series final on Feburary 1 they could send their players home for a brief respite before their World Cup campaign, which officially begins on February 15.
The Indian squad is due to hold a training session on Sunday, its first full day in Australia, before beginning the first of its two-dayers on Monday. Both are being played in the Adelaide beachside suburb of Glenelg, against a Cricket Australia XI of which only NSW duo Gurinder Sandhu and Ryan Carters are established domestic-level players.
SQUAD: M.S. Dhoni (c, sidelined for first Test), Virat Kohli (vc), Varun Aaron, Ravi Ashwin, Shikhar Dhawan, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Naman Ojha, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Lokesh Rahul, Suresh Raina, Wriddhiman Saha, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Karn Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Murali Vijay, Umesh Yadav.
