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Two hours, 24 overs, 42 runs. Thirteen overs in the first hour from the quicks, 11 overs when Harbhajan Singh was tossing and floating. Today’s opening session was neither the most edifying of sights nor the most compelling advert for investing five days of one’s life in a sporting contest.

To see a young fast bowler begin his day’s toil with a medium-paced wide, followed by a string of similarly-inclined deliveries pitched far outside off, to an 8-1 field, was dispiriting in the extreme. Yes, Rahul Dravid should have caught Simon Katich at slip off that over’s second legitimate delivery, but his hands were probably too busy stifling a yawn.

But then that’s tactics for you. India know a draw will be sufficient to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, so eating up time while preventing the game from making any significant progress was precisely what the doctor, and MS Dhoni, had ordered. Besides, thanks to Katich’s wholly uncharacteristic belligerence, Australia’s scoring rate had been intolerably brisk the previous evening. Something had to change, and sharpish.

Slowing down the over rate is not necessarily the evil many contend. It is a valid weapon in a captain’s arsenal, contravening no law. And to derive any form of seemingly perverse pleasure from watching Harbhajan take an eternity to set - and then regularly change - his field is to embrace an essential facet of Test cricket’s rich and varying tapestry: the mind game. The more time a batsman is forced to spend thinking rather than batting, the likelier he is to make a mistake.

Sometimes the fruits can be considerable. Former West Indies legend, Garry Sobers, has claimed that his infamously generous declaration in Trinidad 40 years ago, when England chased down 215, was a direct response to the strategy of his opposite number, Colin Cowdrey, who had spent the series shamelessly throttling back England’s over rate. England, in other words, won the rubber because they managed to provoke the opposition captain, who loathed negativity, into making a stand and taking a risk.

To put Dhoni’s approach into perspective, let’s glance back at the 1981-82 India v England series, long reviled as the modern game’s nadir. Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack saved its ire for the over-rates in Delhi, where Sunil Gavaskar’s side (12.79 per hour) and Keith Fletcher’s tourists (13) remained steadfastly in second gear.

Gavaskar, whose attack comprised spinners and medium-pacers, was lambasted for presiding over "a travesty of cricket".

Yet as Graham Gooch conceded, England were content to fight ice with ice: "We lost the first Test, and then [India] slowed everything down to a snail’s pace, and we followed." The last five Tests were drawn. It usually takes two to tango. And Australia’s over-rate in this series has had little to commend it.

In Dhoni’s case, the ends justified the means, just as it did when Ashley Giles eventually bored Sachin Tendulkar into submission at Bangalore in 2001 by bowling his left-arm spin into the rough outside leg. It may have offended the sensibilities but it did the trick.

Starved of runs, aggression dampened, Australia lost three wickets in adding 35 in 20 overs after lunch, more or less ruining their prospects of a first-innings lead and pretty much scuppering any lingering visions of victory. That one of the dismissals was a run-out was no coincidence. Put simply, Australia blinked first.