On Friday they hosted, and defeated, the West Indies. The WACA became the Wankhede, for a day; five thousand more came to see India than, on Wednesday, had come to see Australia.

Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane turned up back in November and have been batting ever since, occupying Australian wickets long enough to get permanent residency. It was this pair that blunted the West Indies' new-ball challenge on Friday night and built the foundation for MS Dhoni, in middle-management style, to subdue the nerves and lead India to their fourth straight success of the tournament, passing the West Indians' 182 with four wickets and nearly 11 overs to spare.

Dhoni didn't turn up for the start of the Test series, then sort of did, and then didn't. He is here now. In the format we have been asked to call 'World Cup Cricket', Dhoni's captaincy is urgent and zesty. Like his teammates, he looked happy on the pacy WACA wicket. Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav had the West Indian batsmen hopping out of the way of 145kmh bouncers (what is wrong with this picture?).

Dhoni, for a time, was so acclimatised to the bounce in the pitch that he dispensed with pads for wicketkeeping and protected himself with just gloves and a helmet (what is wrong with that picture?).

As for the West Indies, they are a team divided clearly into a batting unit and a bowling unit, only the bowlers do the batting too. Their top order played with a sense of doom, as if they had read a self-fulfilling statistic telling them that when Chris Gayle gets out of the wrong side of bed outside Asia, they lose 100 per cent of the time.

As ever, Gayle set the tone. Within a ten-minute period, he was dropped three times, ran out his partner Marlon Samuels, hit a mighty six and top-edged to a fielder who became, momentarily, a catcher. Gayle hit 200 last week. Sometimes he bats as if he wants to score 200 off every ball.

Scoreboard pressure, in fact, seemed to affect the West Indian batsmen even though they were batting first. They tried 300-or-bust batting, and busted.

Three hundred might have become the norm, but 100 and 200 still have to be passed along the way. By the time the West Indies stopped slogging, they were four for 35 and almost out of the match.

From there, they built their innings upside-down. The tail-enders batted to keep wickets in hand, only the wickets were their own. As is increasingly evident, their young captain Jason Holder is a cricketer of more substance and character than his elders. (If basketball has taken over West Indian cricket, how did it miss Holder?) He compiled a sensible 57 at number nine to give himself and the other bowlers something to defend. He and Jerome Taylor in particular made the Indians work for their runs and made a good game of it. But they were short-handed; the West Indian batsmen, in both halves of the game, were bystanders.

So India have completed the set: posting and defending big totals, steamrolling a minnow, and chasing down a testing small target. They still have room to improve, particularly in their catching. Five months in Australia have all been preparation for the next three weeks. They are here, and still building.