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In 2018, Australian cricket entered its home summer in a state of existential crisis.
It wasn't the midlife type with the green jocks and the red sports cars — that sort of gear belongs to 1990s cricket more than the 2010s.
No, this was something far more fundamental, after the cheating scandal in South Africa and the damning cultural review that followed.
Steve Smith and David Warner, former captain and deputy, were serving out their suspensions.
Half of the top-ranking suits at Jolimont were out of a job.
Every Australian with a stake in the game, from players and administrators to the broadest sweep of supporters, was left questioning who we were, what we stood for; questions that went to our deepest core.
Trying to decide on an identity, trying to come to terms with past wrongdoing, trying to acknowledge that behaviour which had been excused may have been inexcusable after all.
It was the sort of self-reckoning that comes with serious discomfort.
The current Test captain Tim Paine had one objective. "At the start of the summer our main priority was to win back the respect of the Australian public and our cricket fans. Sitting here now we've gone a long way toward doing that. We've probably still got a little bit of work to do," he said.
Somehow this rings true, even though wins have been hard to come by.
A string of triumphant results might have made people feel good in the short term but wouldn't have addressed any problems on its own.
Winning had papered over the cracks for a long time under a string of Paine's predecessors, but scandal had seen the facade stripped back to bare and crumbling brick.
The faults were structural, not cosmetic.
Paine and his band of apprentices still have a hell of a masonry job ahead of them.
But not everyone was or is on board with this rebuild.
Various ex-players defended the abrasive and aggressive approach of their eras, worried about reputation and legacy while remaining tone-deaf to current needs.
Former captain Michael Clarke was their spokesman last November after a lost one-day series against South Africa, saying that Australia "won't win shit" without a return to the snarling approach his sides employed.
The contention was nonsense: a classic mistaking of correlation for causation, with the added bonus of indulging one's shortcomings.
But in a way Clarke did the team a favour, drawing the infection of this attitude out of the wound and into sterilising sunlight.
A fairly broad rejection meant that his contention wasn't much revisited throughout the summer.
Still, the question remained whether a public appetite for a kinder game on the field would hold up under the duress of losing.
The first Test in Adelaide should have been Australia's after bowling out India for 250 on the first day, with only Cheteshwar Pujara's Swiss Army knife-century averting disaster.
It wasn't to be, as the home team's top order fell apart twice to hand back control.
But when a brave late rally from the tail in the fourth innings dragged Australia to within 31 runs of a highly unlikely win, it showed enough heart that supporters were heartened, despite the deficiencies.
Western Australia saw the archetypal Australian home win: call correctly, bat first, make a solid score, blast away with fast bowlers, keep your opponent trailing.
Virat Kohli's masterclass on the fast new Perth Stadium pitch went in vain.
But as much as the victory, people loved the bristle between Paine and the Indian captain throughout the match, and the back-and-forth with Indian wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant that was partly picked up through stump microphones.
Paine made sure to keep his chatter to the right side of good-natured, even when his exchanges with Kohli were more smirk than smile. And people loved it. The internet lit up with how much supporters were enjoying a captain who gave a bit back on the field without lapsing into boorishness.
It was a delicate balance, and while not exactly a bottling plant for champagne comedy, the joke of Paine inviting Pant to move to Hobart as a babysitter became a meme of its own.
Public good cheer faltered through Melbourne and Sydney, as India showed their class on flat pitches and Australia wilted from 1-1 to fall behind.
When Paine in a press conference dryly answered a journalist's phone ringing on the table in front of him, some responses were stroppy: "Why is he making jokes instead of winning," they ran, as though humans can only contain one thought at a time until each is resolved.
But the humourless are a loud minority.
By the end of Sydney, with India having dominated so unarguably and Australia undeservedly saved by rain after conceding 622, the public mood seemed to have moved through the phases from anger and denial to acceptance.
The angst faded, bravado was chastened. There was a certain wonder to hearing parochial voices of the sort that have always described Asian teams with disdain suddenly becoming gracious and calling India the best team in the world.
It was certainly a useful tagline in explaining away a loss.
Partly this was the work of broadcasters.
Australia historically has often seemed to ignore visiting players: they're just the patsies who let the home team rack up numbers. Once in a while our crowds might get interested in one star, but only on the scale of Lara or Tendulkar.
This time the big name was Kohli. Going by the lead-up advertising, you would have thought he was planning to take on 11 Australians singlehanded.
But by the end of the series it had changed. Four Tests gave spectators time to get to know the players as people and characters as well as cricketers.
Combined with their win, this resulted in a deeper appreciation of their work than I've ever seen for a visiting side. People enjoyed Pant for the verve in his chatter and his batting. There was admiration for Jasprit Bumrah, with his bowling speed and relentless attack.
And there was most love of all perhaps for the quiet and understated Pujara, an anti-archetype of the modern athlete, who wears unfashionable kit and "fields like a tree", to borrow the phrase of one domestic cricketer.
He was the batsman that home supporters envied and wanted to emulate. Later he said this was a high compliment, that other teams wanted a player like him.
India knocked off Australia in an entertaining one-day series, with a couple of clinical run chases showing that the home team's strategic approach is off the pace leading up to the 2019 World Cup.
By that stage, two Tests against an injury-ravaged Sri Lanka were mostly an afterthought.
The short series plus the cast of thousands meant there was no chance to create the familiarity of India's visit.
Niroshan Dickwella could have matched Pant in another month, with his chatter and his freewheeling batting. Standing up to the stumps behind an under-pressure Usman Khawaja, the phrase "Remember the Marsh brothers?" was an enjoyably oblique sledge using two players who weren't even in the team.
"I hope you get some runs. I don't want you to be sad, watching your team on TV," Dickwella went on. But he seemed to offer it with good humour, and Khawaja spoke of it later with amusement.
Nathan Lyon chipping players about their batting averages didn't land so well, especially given Australia's batsmen aren't exactly the Lords of Statslandia.
Beating Sri Lanka was a good ending note, even if the season was still rather a pauper's dinner compared to the gluttony of the past.
Australia took one 50-over match off South Africa, then one match in each of the three formats off India. Seven losses could have been eight or nine if not for rain.
But there were upsides and high points. Patrick Cummins established himself as Australia's most important current player, bowling and batting and fielding with nothing but heart through the tough end of the Tests against India, before cleaning up 14 wickets at a sepia-tinged average of 7.78 against Sri Lanka.
Jhye Richardson is an exciting find, first in the one-day team and then in Tests: a young and wiry fast bowler who offers a point of difference in style, as well as the ability to hit the top of the stumps and move the ball in the air.
The Marsh brothers, Peter Handscomb and Aaron Finch were discarded. Khawaja had a disappointing season, when the team had needed him to step up as the senior batsman. The one Test against India where he made a score, they won.
But Travis Head's trajectory continued upwards after his promising debut last October in Dubai, with a string of fifties leading to his first hundred.
Kurtis Patterson made his own first century after some years waiting in the wings. Joe Burns made a statement with his 180 in Canberra about having been left out for so long. Khawaja also made one at his last opportunity.
But in a way his response to Dickwella in the stump mics — "All I'm saying is, sportsmanship goes both ways" — was more significant than the hundred he amassed around it.
So we arrived in February, with a huge overseas winter ahead, and the inevitability of Smith and the less clear prospect of Warner to return.
The coach Justin Langer wants them both, but there will be other factors at play. Not least that Warner still has the capacity to blow up this side if he decides to talk about the ball-tampering story.
If and when those players return, they'll have to fit in with what Paine has built in their absence. The captain said that he "couldn't be happier" with his team's response to the adversity a lost series and a difficult summer.
"It's in difficult times you see the characters you've got in your group, and it's confirmed to us we've got some good characters, some strong characters, and some people we can build a really strong Australian cricket future on," Paine said.
The true test of their new attitude will come in England, not during the World Cup but during the Ashes that follow.
They will get roasted up and down the country for days at a time.
It will be brutal in the way that sections of English crowds can. You can see it now, beery blokes wearing St George's Cross, hanging over the boundary fence with sandpaper in their hands.
So the challenge for Paine's players will be to hold true to their new ways, going high even when faced with those who would rather go the other way.
If they can, they'll find a lot of good company at the upper level, and they'll take away one kind of win no matter what the scoreline reads.