Captains Rohit Sharma and Steve Smith walk onto the stage, accepting team caps from Modi and Albanese. The unlikely quartet link hands in a celebratory image of cricket, and financial, friendship.

Next comes the centrepiece: a lap of honour for Modi and Albanese in a bat mobile or chariot, adorned with a pair of cricket bats, like the swords behind the Game of Thrones seat of power. They greet a crowd of around 50,000 spectators, delaying the toss by about seven minutes as they do so. It is reminiscent of the infamous Batmobile in which Angry Anderson belted out Bound for Glory at the 1991 AFL grand final.  

To his relief on a typically hot Ahmedabad day, Steve Smith wins the toss. When the teams are finally allowed back onto the ground, it is for each XI to shake hands with their respective prime minister, as Queen Elizabeth II so often did at Lord’s Tests.

Albanese, getting into the absurd spirit of things, then deigns to link arms with the Australian team for the playing of the national anthem. So far in his tenure, Albanese has avoided some of the cringer moments of sport and politics crossover that came to be associated with his predecessor Scott Morrison. But this is a real blurring of lines.

Eventually, as the stage gets dismantled, the batmobile filed away and the press gallery journalists and consular staff make their way to the next whistle stop, the Test match starts more or less on time.

Travis Head takes the opening over from Mohammed Shami, with Usman Khawaja at the non-striker’s end. Befitting a spectacle so far off the usual scale of things, or the respectful distance between sport and politics, the first ball is a wide.

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