To kick-off what some call "probably the biggest series ever played", Australia, cricket's wandering bully-boys, made their opening remarks in a Mumbai disco. Called Insomnia. So do they expect to have a good time? Or a bad one? Stupid question, matey, because this is India. For no reason, the good times can go bad and the bad times rendered rosy. Somewhere, somehow circumstances collide, a switch is thrown and everything changes. Like 2001. Remember it?

Matt the bat does, a little mournfully, "Australia probably lost in about 10 minutes of that series. Ten minutes." In 2001, Matthew Hayden found himself as a Test cricketer scoring 549 runs at 109.8 an innings in India and has not stopped since. "That was almost the perfect Test series," he says. Almost. In the critical 10 minutes on the third day of the Kolkata Test, India up to their eyebrows in trouble, Rahul Dravid arrived and settled in with V.V.S. Laxman. A week later in Chennai, the series finished 2-1 to India. DVDs of the three Tests are sold under the title The Greatest Series Ever.

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MATCH-UP: Rampant Dravid (left) up against a fit Warne

The Biggest Series Ever Played, The Greatest Series Ever; when India play Australia, the only sure thing, it seems, is hyperbolic hardsell-and the unpredictable. "In India momentum can switch like that," Hayden snaps his fingers. "When it is gone, you can never get it back." Actually, don't remember 2001 because it is gone too. India and Australia are older, stronger, er ... balder and, it must be hoped, smarter. India, whimsical, watchable, seem to be Australia's natural adversary.

Not only were they World Cup finalists, but when they met last in a Test series on Australian soil 10 months ago, India didn't go down under, squaring four Tests 1-1. Now Australia come ashore on a land where they have not won a Test series since 1969.

Steve Waugh called India the Final Frontier. It remains unfinished business. With three tours in eight years, it seems they won't leave India alone until the resistance breaks. In 2001, off-spinner Harbhajan Singh had provided the magic series taking 32 of 50 Australian wickets. In Kolkata, as India trailed by 276, Laxman's 281 and a partnership of 376 with Dravid provided the miracle.

DRAVID ON WARNE

"Warne is a great bowler and he has it all-variety, guile, accuracy and a big heart which is how he has taken 500 wickets. He has had his successes against me and I have had successes against him. To be considered his target is a back-handed compliment in some ways. He has had successes everywhere except in India and we will see how he goes. He had a lot of wickets in Sri Lanka but the conditions are different here." Dravid vs Australia: Tests 12 Runs 1313 Avg 57.09 100s 2 50s 7

But October will mark the end of all miracles. The Australians will take Harbhajan into account and factor in Laxman. However strong the temptation, captain Sourav Ganguly will not be dismissed in lazy cliche. Sachin Tendulkar, stricken by tennis elbow, may not be able to strike early blows. Besides, India is not unknown to the Aussies any more; most of the current players have toured here as juniors or seniors. "The mystique of India is not there any more," says their coach John Buchanan. During the Champions Trophy they trained wearing three layers of clothing and woolly hats to get their bodies used to "Indian" degrees of heat. A yoga instructor, Kate Turner, has joined the touring party. They talk about stretching time and seizing the moment. In March, they swept three Tests in Sri Lanka, their most dominant Asian performance in a decade.

The Indians were watching. "They are probably a better team than the one that came here last time, when they had a lot of batting first-timers," says Indian vice-captain Dravid. "But since then we have developed as a side too."

WARNE ON DRAVID

"I have enjoyed success against Rahul Dravid but I have always respected him. He has developed into a quality player since I first played against him. The main change that I have noticed in Rahul over the past few years is that he has realised how good a player he really is. He is the rock of the Indian batting line-up and at the moment he is on a roll. He is the man to get because all the others, all the stroke players, they bat around him." Warne vs India: Tests 11 Wkts 29 Avg 55.45

Ten months ago when the Indians toured Australia, the openers blunted the new ball and gave the middle order a platform to succeed. "The Indians played better than we thought they would," says paceman Glenn McGrath, adding helpfully, "but those were batsmen-friendly wickets." Pre-series jousting dictates that all compliments given with one hand must be of the kind that can be taken away with the other.

In truth, Australia did little wrong in 2001. The flaws are probably noted down in some secret Not To Do list. They could not save the Kolkata Test, but after Sri Lanka, they think they have got that sorted. The Indian top six in Australia showed them the way, batting, in Justin Langer words, "like they were in a meditative state".

Stand-in captain Adam Gilchrist looks inward, "Maybe we celebrated our success too early. We had won 16 Tests in a row and in Kolkata, India were following on and Sachin was out. We were on an absolute high." Moral of the story? "You can't get too far ahead of yourself," he says. Buchanan agrees that the Australians might have wanted victory almost too much and that "it became a bit of a crusade for some players". The Final Frontiersman probably wore everyone out.

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CONFIDENCE BUILDERS: Ponting's men win in Sri Lanka; Ganguly (right) holds off Australia at home

In 2004, they choose to open the verbals in India at a nightclub only because all other conference venues at their Mumbai hotel are taken. But it is clear the Aussies are trying a lower pitch. "It is an important tour," says Gilchrist, "but not the be-all and end-all of our cricketing lives." So just calm down everybody. If you can when you see a storm is coming.

"You are talking it up too much," says a deep, bass voice that is not known to register a higher decibel-unless, of course, Anil Kumble, for it is his voice, wants to appeal for LBW. Kumble hopes he will do so with success and frequency; he is only three Test wickets away from 400. Only one other Indian, Kapil Dev, has got this far. As the seniormost bowler in world cricket, the Bangalore leg spinner has seen it all. Instead of the freaky chakra talk from the Australians, his series is surveyed in succinct bits and bytes. Enough runs on the board to give the bowlers a good crack. And no cheap shots about how taking wickets at home is no big deal.

In 2001, Kumble turned up at a pre-series camp in Chennai after a major surgery, his bowling arm in a sling. He stood in the sun and didn't stop talking to a bunch of slow bowling rookies.

Now, he will be the man to lead the bowlers, and Harbhajan, on the mend from surgery himself, is glad. "Nobody else has what we have-two good spinners bowling in tandem," says the man whom the Aussies first nicknamed the Turbanator. "Australia has one great leg spinner in Shane Warne but not another one to play with him."

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BREAK IN PLAY: Aussie captain Ponting and Tendulkar (right) may not feature in early action

It is not just the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on the line but a home record stretching back 18 seasons in which India have lost only one full series. It is poetic justice for Kumble: every wicket he takes in October will not only be precious to his team but also take him, the much-mocked-spinner-who-cannot-spin-it, closer to becoming India's most successful bowler ever. The world fears the ferocious Aussie batsmen. Kumble fears nothing, he merely knows what he must do. "They take more chances than anyone else. They like to take the initiative away from the bowler early, whether it is seamers or spinners. Runs on the board are important because they knock them off quickly. You have to think and bowl differently," he says.

Kumble's art like the man himself has developed quietly-in Australia he became India's main strike bowler when injury ruled Harbhajan out. In his most successful overseas series he picked up 24 wickets, variations in pace his key weapon. A line graph of his bowling speeds during the series looked like the ECG of a heart patient with palpitations.

Oddly enough, that could actually be a visual representation of the condition of the Indian batsmen. The same whose patience and discipline were borrowed by the Australians have struggled in one-day cricket all season. They have fallen victim to unexplained flashes of uncontrolled impulse. In the heat of the short game, the form and confidence from last season have melted away. The Indians will have to start all over-against the game's most relentless team. Nothing like a little crisis to focus the mind.

As one of two crisis management specialists in the batting line-up, Laxman has a higher average against Australia than even Tendulkar and was part of three triple-century partnerships versus the world champs. A team that turns perfectly decent batsmen into bunnies has been forced to admit that no one makes them look more like pie-chuckers.

Brett Lee has been quick in distributing a Waugh witticism to the world: "If you get Dravid, great. If you get Sachin, brilliant. If you get Laxman, it is a miracle." Laxman said his thank yous but knows fast bowlers do not dish out compliments from the goodness of their hearts. The issue at hand is Indian form. "We haven't transformed our starts this season," says Laxman. "Hopefully we will compensate against Australia. Watch every ball and don't think about who is bowling. Names don't matter." In a series like this, nor do reputations on either side.

For all their success in Sri Lanka, Australia know that this is a different land, large and boisterous, each Test venue with its own rules set usually by eccentric curators. Wickets in India are neither as slow nor as variable as in Lanka and lend themselves to a sharper bounce and turn.

Both camps know what to expect but knowing and preparing means nothing. All the positives from previous tours, from Sri Lanka, from wins over the Indians in one-day cricket will last, says Gilchrist, "only until the first ball is bowled in Bangalore". Like Helmuth von Moltke, a 19th century Prussian general, once said, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Plans may not work but mindsets do. One of Indian cricket's forgotten men believes Australia demands a man to be "bull-headed". Samir Dighe kept wickets in the deciding 2001 Chennai Test. As wickets toppled around him, he scored 22 to see India home. He chuckles at one memory: remarking loudly to new man Zaheer Khan that off spinner Colin Miller was looking bloody dangerous. Whether Dighe's remarks had anything to do with Waugh's decision to keep bowling Miller (who had taken two wickets) will not be known. But why leave anything to chance? In Miller's next over, Dighe crashed two boundaries and the Indians inched closer to victory. Today Dighe does long hauls as a flight purser on Air-India and says, "The only way to win against the Aussies is not to be afraid of failure."

The contest has already seized the two teams: Australians are learning to do pranayam and Indians are trying to be cold-eyed. The two nations are not scheduled to meet again until 2007-8 and an Australian side is not likely to return to India before 2010. This is the last time two streams of skill and nerve will rush headlong into each other, a violent, churning rapid which will drown weak men.

For one final time, as the world watches, McGrath will calibrate the air outside Dravid's off-stump, two stoics going at each other in silent, bitter conflict. Hayden will wind up that massive log of a bat to try and sweep Kumble, who will be wearing his annoyed accountant's face. Gillespie will give nothing to no one and Ganguly will let it all hang out. And, if the Gods are kinder still, a short, square man will do his quarter-squat, open up his stance and challenge the chubby pink-faced fella with spiky blond hair to bend that leg-break. India vs Australia is white-knuckle cricket. Insomnia has everything to do with it.

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