Steve Waugh famously described a tour of India as the 'Final Frontier', and that was back in the early 2000s when Australia's global hegemony was more or less unrivalled. His men failed, in legendary fashion, on the VVS Laxman-inspired 2000-01 campaign, but with Adam Gilchrist in temporary command four years later, they made impressive amends.

More recently, however, Australia's tours of India have been pretty ghastly affairs - none more so than the 2012-13 campaign that resulted in a 4-0 whitewash and earned global infamy for the so-called 'Homeworkgate' affair. The challenge of slow, turning tracks has exposed a number of shortcomings among Australia's batsmen, who have found their traditional belligerent response to adversity cuts no mustard against spinners of India's quality.

And so, there's little optimism on offer in the pre-series stakes at Bet365. India are 1/6 to complete a routine series win, with Australia a distant 10/1 to wrap up a surprise result. Virat Kohli's men laid an impressive marker with a 4-0 pasting of England before Christmas - a series that concluded with back-to-back innings wins in spite of England twice posting 400-plus totals in the first innings.

If Australia are to have any hope at all, they will need their captain and vice-captain firing as best they can. Steve Smith and David Warner have the talent and speed of stroke to keep the runs flowing even while the rest of their innings may be floundering, and at 11/4, both men are unsurprisingly joint-favourites to lead the line for the visitors in the first Test at Pune.

No prizes for guessing who is India's market leader. Fresh from a double-century against Bangladesh last week, Kohli is in the process of confirming his credentials as this generation's outstanding batsman, and he is a prohibitive 13/8 to be India's leading run-scorer in the course of the four-Test series. Cheteshwar Pujara, at 10/3, is his nearest challenger.