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After the one-sided 10-wicket victory in Adelaide, few people will have high hopes of this week's pink ball Test at the Gabba being a classic.
The West Indies have, after all, lost their last four Tests in the city stretching back to a draw in 1992.
That is despite having a relatively admirable record of failing to be beaten in six of their 12 Tests at the venue.
One of those came 64 years ago when these two nations played out one of the greatest Test matches of all time.
Today's Test will be the 2,524th in cricket history.
Just two of the preceding 2,523 have resulted in a tie — including the 498th Test in history, which was the first of the 1960/61 series between the West Indies and Australia at the Gabba.
It was the West Indies second ever visit to Brisbane following on a three-wicket defeat in 1951 and was momentous for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the West Indies were captained by Barbadian legend Frank Worrell — the first time a black man had skippered the West Indies for an entire series and just the second black man to ever officially take charge of the side after George Headley.
Secondly, it was the first time the ABC had covered all five Tests of a touring team.
The broadcaster could not have picked a better series to start with.
Great Australian player-turned-journalist Jack Fingleton described the series opener at the Gabba as "The greatest Test of all" — and he would not have had many disagree with him.
Both Worrell and Australia captain Richie Benaud were utterly committed to playing attacking cricket and that manifested in five of the most extraordinary days of cricket ever seen in Woolloongabba.
Winning the toss and electing to bat, the West Indies made 453 in their first innings, with Garfield Sobers's 132 the top score, with half-centuries from Worrell (65), Joe Solomon (65), Gerry Alexander (60) and Wes Hall (50) helping the tourists to their total.
Either side of the rest day, Norm O'Neill's 181 helped the Aussies establish a 52-run first innings lead.
Alan Davidson, who took 5-135 in the first innings, then tore through the West Indies batting with a superb 6-87 to set Australia 233 to win, only Worrell (65) and Rohan Kanhai (54) contributed anything of note.
On the final day, the West Indies' final pair of Hall and Alf Valentine added a crucial 25 runs while taking time away from the Australians.
The equation was simple enough though — 233 to win in 310 minutes, which equated in the end to 69 eight-ball overs (Eight-ball overs were used in Australia until the end of the 1978/79 season).
Benaud, in his gorgeously evocative account of the final day's play in his book A Tale of two Tests, described it as "in retrospect, surely the most nerve-wracking 310 minutes of all time".
Hall was brilliant for the Windies in the opening session, "a dismal morning for Australia" according to Benaud in which Hall took two of his five wickets while restricting Australia's run rate.
After lunch, the Aussies were reduced to 6-92, with number seven batter Alan Davidson and number eight Benaud the last recognised batters.
"It's a lonely feeling to walk onto a Test arena to do battle with eleven players from another country," Benaud recalled in his book.
"Lonely … exciting … and challenging."
During tea Benaud assured Sir Donald Bradman that he was "going for a win", and the seventh-wicket pair made a solid fist of doing so, putting on a partnership of 136.
"They'll crack," Benaud recalled thinking.
"If only we can get the pressure on them … they must crack, they've done it so often before."
But the West Indies did not crack, in part to their skipper, remembered by Benaud as "a great cricketer in every sense of the word … the sort of man one cannot imagine falling into panic".
Worrell was renowned as the calmest of operators and he needed to be — the crowd, Benaud recalled, was in "a frenzy that I hadn't seen before at a cricket ground".
They had every reason to be in a state of severe excitement.
With 10 minutes of play remaining, Australia needed nine runs for victory.
A single to mid-wicket made the requirement eight, but then, disaster.
Solomon ran out Davidson after "a bad call, a dangerous call" from Benaud, who did some "harsh thinking" after the wicket that had the Windies "jubilant".
Wally Grout took two balls to get off the mark and then took a single to make it seven runs to win with four minutes remaining.
At the start of the final over from Hall, Grout, who "had prefaced his arrival at the crease by some nervous chain-smoking", was struck on the solar plexus by Hall, with Benaud calling him through for an "agonising single".
Six to win with seven balls remaining.
The next ball was a bouncer that Benaud gloved to Gerry Alexander.
"Have you ever tried so hard to do something, concentrated so desperately that everything else was pushed out from your mind, and then seen it disappear in a fraction of a second? Then you'll have some idea of how I felt," Benaud wrote.
Five to win, six balls remaining.
Ian Meckiff scampered through for a bye off the second ball he faced with some quick thinking.
Four required from four balls.
Next ball, Grout clipped a simple catch up to Solomon at square leg, only for Hall to run around and drop the ball attempting to take the catch himself.
Three from three.
Meckiff swung wildly at the next ball out to mid wicket, where the long grass, uncut that morning due to a shower of rain, Conrad Hunte picked up the ball and threw the ball 80 yards "a magnificent throw" to Alexander, who whipped off the bails with Grout still a foot out of his ground.
Scores level. Two balls to go.
Number 11 Lindsay Kline clipped his first ball to forward square leg where Solomon was waiting.
The Guyanese middle order batter — renowned as an outrageous fielder whose skills were honed by a childhood spent throwing marbles at mangoes — gathered the ball and threw down the stumps: "There surely could never have been a better throw" recalled Benaud as the ball hit the stumps from side on.
"There came a tremendous roar from a crowd of 4,000, who sounded like twenty times that number, greeting the end of the game," wrote Benaud.
The first tie in Test history.
Australia went on to win the series 2-1, with the West Indies winning the SCG Test by 222 runs either side of two Australia victories at the MCG and an Adelaide draw.
It was a series of such breathtaking brilliance that Fingleton credited it with revitalising international cricket.
"From something which seemed inexorably headed for the textbooks of the antiquarians, international cricket emerged from that breathless, spine-tingling Test [in Brisbane] as a game that can be played as a game for the enjoyment of the players themselves and the enormous delight of the cash customers," he wrote.
Because cricket, after a dour decade throughout the 50s, was desperately in need of being saved — proof perhaps that fears of the sport's death have prevailed for about as long as the sport has been played.
As David Woodhouse recounts in his book on West Indies cricket, Who Only Cricket Know, Bradman had told the Australian players prior to the tour that the players should play for the fans, not just the flag — the implication that winning at all costs needed to be tempered by the fact that people still had to want to come and watch the games.
The players heeded his advice, resulting in record crowds who were treated to thrilling performances by men, as Woodhouse says, "who would possibly not have been allowed into Australia had they not been playing cricket" on account of the colour of their skin.
Before the tourists left Australia, they were given an open-top ticker-tape parade through the streets on February 17, 1961, reported as being 250,000 people strong.
Even if today's West Indies pull off a shock win they'll be unlikely to get a similar reception as their predecessors 63 years ago.
But a good showing will no doubt help add some fuel to a format of the sport that is currently existing on fumes, and give some impetuous to those that would wish upon the sport the sort of change that will allow the sport to continue in its longest form.
Follow all the action from the second Test between Australia and the West Indies at the Gabba in the ABC Sport live blog or listen to live commentary via ABC radio or the ABC Listen App.
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