For a first Test match of the season, the Mohali mayhem has spoilt us. It was a cracker, with bat and ball taking turns to rule, and, as is the new paradigm in Indian cricket, we've had the invigorating sight of pace bowlers firing the ball profitably into the batsmen's ribs on the fourth and fifth days.

A series between Australia and India should be taken on its own terms, and the first Test has whet the appetite for the second. Outside of the two ties, this is as close a finish as has ever been fought in 133 years. That alone is worth celebrating from both sides. But beyond that, we also know that in a couple of months the Indian tour will be a dusty memory (for the Australians at least) and will be seen as having been a tune-up for the bigger battle over the summer.

From that perspective, Australia's performance in Mohali has been both heartening and deeply worrying. On the upside, the team has shown a promising resilience. In recent lost series, such as the 2009 Ashes, it has only taken one bad session to undo Australia. Andrew Flintoff at Lord's and Stuart Broad at The Oval pretty much stole the urn with two spells. This was very uncharacteristic of a contemporary Australian team, and the most concerning feature of their defeat.

In Mohali, Ricky Ponting's men have shown more fight. On the third morning, they were looking down the barrel of a big first-innings deficit, but Mitchell Johnson and Doug Bollinger reeled the Indians in. Likewise, on the fourth afternoon, after a frightful batting collapse, the pacemen brought Australia back into the game, with Ben Hilfenhaus showing great versatility by bringing his length back and using his fast bouncer to great effect. Bollinger, until his misfortunate injury, was also superb on the last day. Johnson might have sprayed the last ball (and a few others), but he also could, with better umpiring, have emerged as the hero of the Test match.

The pace bowling, in sum, has been Australia's strong suit in this Test, which is a good portent for the Ashes. As a pointer to the future, they don't want Michael Clarke taking the wickets and Johnson scoring the runs. It can't be sustained. What they want is Johnson taking wickets, which he has, and Clarke scoring runs, which he hasn't.

Four years ago, the lynchpins of Australia's 5-0 Ashes win were Ponting, Clarke and Michael Hussey. They will have to be again, but their performance in Mohali continues a bubbling anxiety about their ability to string together big scores. Ponting, as he has been for three years, was patchy against the Indians, willing himself to concentrate but unable to sustain it over a long period. If Australia are to win back the Ashes, Ponting will need a 500-run series. At the moment he looks like a man who can lift himself for a century a series, but seemingly lacks the freshness to keep piling up runs as he did in his best years.

Hussey occupied the crease for 150 balls over two innings in Mohali, but scored off fewer than one in five of them. A sheet anchor is a good thing, but at number five he also needs to be adaptable, or else he bogs the scoring down. As he has in the past two years, Hussey appears to be putting in massive effort for a choked-up output.

Clarke failed twice in Mohali, and was unsettled by Ishant Sharma's bounce and pace. Clarke can be expected to rebound, but again, like Ponting and Hussey, the pressure is on him against England not just to make good 40s and 50s and the occasional hundred but to take hold of the series, make it his own. He finds himself where Ponting was at the beginning of the last decade: he's had his apprenticeship in Test cricket, and it's the next five years that will determined whether he becomes a champion Australian batsman in the tradition of Ponting, Steve Waugh, Allan Border and Greg Chappell, or a good middle-order batsman with an average in the mid-40s.

Marcus North's continued selection at number six, in series against Pakistan and India when new blood could have been tried, is something the selectors will regret. If North comes back to score a hundred in the second Indian encounter, what will that prove? That he can spice big scores among the failures? We already know he can do that. What North has never proven at Test level is that he can produce runs consistently. He will probably be picked for Brisbane not on his record but because the selectors have not taken the opportunity to find a replacement. Usman Khawaja appears to have been taken to India for the experience. Callum Ferguson, the logical number six, has made his return from injury in T20 cricket. Steve Smith has been given mixed messages, and Phil Hughes likewise, when one logical solution could be to restore him at the top and put Shane Watson in at number six.

A lack of planning, and persistence with a batting line-up in their mid-30s, will come back to bite Australia this summer. For now, though, they are fully engaged in cricket's hottest rivalry and making a laudable fist of it.