Rohit Sharma’s team had prepared behind a cloak of seclusion in Perth ahead of the series, with security tightly guarding the team’s space. India’s players are used to open training sessions for white-ball games and the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition, but Test match preparation tends to be a more private affair for most international teams.

“Very different. Not used to it,” KL Rahul told reporters on Wednesday. “We have practice with crowds but it’s mostly T20 and ODIs back home, we’ve had crowds come in and watch our practice sessions.

“So it felt a little different but also it adds to your preparation for the Test match and gives us a bit of what we can expect on day one or all the days here in Adelaide, so it was good.”

There is a paradox to the experience of Indian cricketers in Australia. The touring side loves the relative anonymity they are afforded here, and players explore their surroundings much more freely than at home, where they tend to be confined to cricket grounds and hotels.

But that experience is slowly changing as Australian cricket pushes to engage greater numbers of the south Asian immigrant population that has brought a love of cricket to this country.

Adelaide Oval has witnessed some extraordinary sights around open training in the past. In 1998, a club cricketer called Ian O’Rourke heckled the touring South African team so consistently that an irritated captain, the late Hansie Cronje, invited him into the nets to have a hit with the words, “see if it’s so easy from this side”.

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Cronje, Lance Klusener, Makhaya Ntini and Shaun Pollock then proceeded to send down a succession of bouncers at O’Rourke, whose struggles to lay bat on ball led Pat Symcox to remark “would you like me to put a bell in it?”

India’s training session on Wednesday was a much quieter affair, with a gaggle of spectators allowed no further than the locked southern gates, from which they could get a fleeting glimpse of the nets more than 100 metres away.

Rahul, who played the ideal foil for young batting sensation Yashavsi Jaiswal in Perth, is expected to drop down to No.3 to make way for Rohit’s return to the team.

“We were really happy with the way we played and it does give you confidence when you travel to Australia and win the first game and win it in the way we did, especially in Perth,” Rahul said. “So much has been spoken about Perth being the fastest wicket in Australia and teams that travel here really struggle there, so we have taken a lot of confidence from that, but we try and move on.

“Pink ball is going to be different, so take the confidence from that game and really use that in this game. One thing that’s been spoken a lot in the dressing room is winning sessions and not really worrying about winning the whole game or talking about day four or day five, just winning each session. We’ll be trying to do that again.”

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