When tailenders come out to bat, the cricket often becomes a step removed from the lunch-time entertainment. A bit of cheek, a touch of the carnivalesque, even some slapstick accidental shots before the real contest resumes.

As the Brisbane Test passed its day three equinox, while the Indian openers' minds turned to grooving their front elbows and their bowlers were eyeing how they could buff up their figures with late wickets, while a sun-dazed Gabba, in short, took its eye off the game, the Test match turned.

Throughout, there was something upside-down about the cricket. India bossed the first hour's play with a fast-bowling assault, bouncing out Brad Haddin before Steve Smith and Mitchell Johnson started the fightback with some splash-and-dash hitting. Smith shunted the ball over slips with the action of a man using his cricket bat to stop his ceiling fire alarm from beeping. Johnson practised baseball swings and went on a personal crusade to lure viewers back from the Big Bash League. As a batsman, he is always stylish – imagine Alistair Cook if he had a downswing as well as a backlift – and some of his shots raced so truly off the blade that the Indian fieldsmen would not have gone near the ball even if they had managed to see it.

Once that pair were out, their 148-run partnership had restored scoreboard parity. But that was presumably that. Johnson's cavalier knock had ended 12 runs short of a century and, having finally dismissed Smith after 692 deliveries on both sides of the Great Divide, the Indian bowlers could surely take a rest.

But wait, there was more! There's always an air of mockery in wagging tails, never more so when the tail-enders take themselves seriously. Nathan Lyon was a picture of orthodoxy, and checked the cue-end of his bat disbelievingly when a high-elbowed drive did not race to the boundary. Mitchell Starc, who has often used his bat to restore his sense of belonging in this level of cricket, slogged a few early but then became increasingly rectilinear. It was warming to see him succeed after a wretched first two days. Once he harnesses his bowling, you could say, he will be a genuine all-rounder.

India, who bowled too provocatively at the beginning of Johnson's innings, had reverted to a better line and length, but there was a feeling their cricket was revolted by an abomination against nature. Batsmen bat and bowlers bowl. (And in India's case, their four bowlers bowled all but two of their 109.4 overs.) You could go cod-sociological about it and see a contest between a caste system and a convict colony, the Australian tailenders playing the role of emancipists rising up, wearing suits and becoming members of parliament. Certainly there was a seigneurial glance from M.S. Dhoni as he left a chance to his first slip Ravi Ashwin. But it has nothing to do with that; this is the Indian team that had a chokehold on England in Nottingham six months ago until they let James Anderson score 81 in a 10th-wicket partnership of 198 and take the man-of-the-match award for his batting. Yes, that James Anderson.

There were no world records for the Australian tail, but they wrought a change in the Test match's underlying structure. Rather than building a handsome lead, India's batsmen would be going out to rectify a deficit. Lyon was out with his team ahead by 47. But, like a shaggy dog story, there was still more to come. Although Josh Hazlewood and Starc resembled a pair of giants with toy bats, adding to the humorous expectations,they were as po-faced as Gilbert and George and batted more correctly the longer they went on.

And still they kept going. Dhoni held conferences with his bowlers, who continued without visible alteration. Another Kookaburra left the field with full-body cramps (what are Australian administrators doing to look after their balls?). The longer the mid-game hiatus went on, the more the balance in the real game shifted. Tea-time came, but like naughty boys the Indians were left out in the field. Australia's lead arrived at the brink of three figures, their scoring rate such that they scored 505 off the same number of balls from which India had made 407: action-packed cricket, and no microphones or fireworks needed.

Eventually it came to an end, Starc missing one, and as always after a tailend stand his dismissal looked completely inevitable and only a matter of time. But how much time, and how many runs!