All day it felt like the storm was closing in. A clear morning gave way to violent buffets of wind. The flags over the Members Pavilion stood out so stiff they could have been cardboard. The clouds overhead increased layer by layer, until the air itself grew so thick that you felt like dipping a slice of bread in it.

All around Sydney, blotches of yellow and orange into deep dried-blood red clustered over the rain radar, from Hornsby to Mosman, over Homebush and Bankstown. Somehow for hours the Sydney Cricket Ground stayed safely in a decreasing dry centre.

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The morning sun had shone as blithely and brightly as Australia’s hopes of offering meaningful resistance. As briefly, too. This struggling team hasn’t won a lot of sessions this series. Adding 98 runs for the loss of only Usman Khawaja was a win. Marcus Harris was entertaining the crowd, and after a calendar year bereft of Test centuries, it looked like 2019 would start with one.

At the other end was Marnus Labuschagne, the highly contentious newcomer to the side who was batting at first drop, producing a couple of classy shots and some solid defence.

But this summer the clouds have never been far away. “I thought this would be Australia’s day with the bat,” said former Australia batsman Ed Cowan alter on ABC radio. “It was the day when they could make the mental breakthrough. Two fast bowlers on a placid pitch. It was on a plate. It was on a plate for the top six today to make a statement.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Australian player Marcus Harris at the fourth cricket Test match between against India at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Photograph: Speed Media/REX/Shutterstock

Harris had the best chance. But on 79, having put on 56 with Labuschagne, he cut at a Ravindra Jadeja ball that was far too full, edging back onto his stumps. India’s seamers, meanwhile, had noticed Labuschagne playing across his front pad. Mohammad Shami kept bowling straight. Two midwickets waited for a snaffle. On 38, Labuschagne middled it straight into the leg-side trap.

That made three tame dismissals, and two catches at midwicket, after Khawaja had galloped down at the left-arm wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav. Not for the first time this summer, he carried through with a lofted shot despite failing to reach the pitch of the ball. Three for 144, responding to India’s declared innings of 622, and the slide was on again.

Travis Head advanced as well, only to tamely slot a Kuldeep full toss straight back into the bowler’s hands on 20. Shaun Marsh propped forward to edge an innocuous straight ball from Jadeja to slip, notching yet another single-figure score. Tim Paine aimed a booming drive at a spinner who turns the ball sharply into the right-hander, leaving a gate swinging open in the wind for Kuldeep to drive straight through.

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The string of middling-to-good scores that never became truly substantial is the story of the series. Never before over four Tests has Australia had more batsmen dismissed between facing 30 and 100 balls. You can find the significance in that, with a slight Magic Eye squint: previously batsmen who haven’t been out early have strapped in for a long stay. When captain Paine complained of bowling on flat pitches, his predecessor Ricky Ponting fired back. “If they’re flat, get some runs on them.”

As so often this past year, Patrick Cummins at number eight showed the shortcomings of his top-order colleagues: defending most balls, then nailing the right candidates along the ground through cover, along the ground on the straight drive, along the ground sweeping, and only going aerial when pulling a short ball to an unattended midwicket.

As he batted on with Peter Handscomb, floodlights blazed and the storm grew closer. Security guards ringed the boundary, smothered in the ripple of clear plastic ponchos as though angry jellyfish had been roused to leave the sea. The previous evening, Rishabh Pant had smashed the bowling around in the hard bright light of an Australian summer. It’s a light that leaves nowhere to hide. But when the home team batted a day later the weather surrounded them, threatening, suffocating. That’s how it has felt this series. Like the rain that ended play, the fall has only ever been a matter of time.