It was selectors: Aaron Finch at the top of the order? Mitch Marsh anywhere in the order? Not that it's his fault. He's generation Z. It was the toss. It's beside the point that we were probably going to bowl anyway; it's the principle of the toss. It was the pitch. Everyone said so. It was too hard to bowl on on the first two days, impossible to bat on on the third. You can hardly blame us for that. The curator should be sacked. He's only just been hired? Sack him anyway. We can all agree it wasn't Pat Cummins' fault. Credit:AAP It was the last pitch, too, at Optus stadium. It lured us into thinking we're going OK. It was the footmarks: they had them and we didn't. It was reverse swing: they executed it and we didn't. That's certainly a reversal. But don't you sometimes wonder what's changed?

It was Tim Paine's bowling tactics. They were all right in Perth, all wrong here. Didn't we tell you that, say, if Pat Cummins bowled at the stumps and the batsmen, and not past them, on an uneven pitch he might take all the wickets he deserves? As it turns out, they were just round the corner. But that's how it is when you're captain and so is everyone else. It was the Indian seamers and the hard collective bargain they drove. David Peever would have hated it. It was Ishant and Shami and Jadeja, too, and it was especially the startling Jasprit Bumrah. Tim Paine dives to make his ground after taking a quick single. Credit:AAP We're used to 140 km/h seamers who can move it both ways blasting through the opposition in Australia-India series here, but they're usually ours. We're used to making 400-plus while they make a hash of it. It's cultural misappropriation, that's what it is. It was Virat Kohli, the wanker. Did you see? First he had the effrontery to wave to Bay 13. Then he had the effrontery not to. I remember when Indians knew their place. Now it's here.

But it sure was Kohli who should be held to account here. His field placings left us nowhere to go. Then his celebrations when we got out left us in no doubt about where to go. At least it meant he had no trouble finding the way when Cummins got his bunny in the evening. Loading It was the batting coach. It was all the batting coaches. Concentrate on your footwork, they say, but keep your legs out of the way. Try to do that and not fall in a heap. Or look at Friday's tapes. It's the IPL. It's the BBL (but did you see the way Pete Handscomb hit them the other night? Or was it on Fox?) It wasn't Cummins. On that we can all agree. But brilliant as he was in the third innings jiggery pokery of Friday evening, the only effect will be to hasten the match to its conclusion without changing the result.