Going by India's solid record against the Kangaroos in 17 ODIs since 2017 (11 wins), the odds were heavily in favour of the visitors to register their consecutive series win on the Aussie soil when they landed down under in the second week of November to play their first bilateral series of the post-COVID cricketing calendar.
However, Kohli and co's on-field performances took a horrendous dip. Two below-par bowling and fielding efforts at the Sydney Cricket Ground resulted in Australia registering back-to-back record 350-plus totals.
The star-studded Indian batting line-up, despite raising hopes of chasing down the targets of 375 and 390, eventually succumbed to scoreboard pressure. The narrow 13-run victory in the final ODI in Canberra helped Kohli and co to avert a repetition of what happened in New Zealand earlier this year.
A look at the failures that stopped Virat Kohli from becoming the first Indian skipper to register back-to-back ODI series wins on Aussie soil:
Agarwal, Gill failing to fill Rohit's shoes
2020 was a forgettable year for Rohit Sharma. After the New Zealand tour, he had to miss the Australia campaign as well, due to recurring hamstring injuries. Mayank Agarwal and Shubman Gill got opportunities but couldn't cash in.
Agarwal, despite giving back-to-back fifty-plus opening partnerships with Shikhar Dhawan at Sydney, failed to convert his twenties into big knocks as his gung-ho approach brought about his downfall.
While opening partnerships of 156 and 142 runs between David Warner and Aaron Finch helped Australia to pile up record totals of 374-6 and 389-4 at the same ground, lack of similar performances from the Agarwal and Dhawan combo only added more pressure on Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul.
In the final match at Canberra, Gill got to play in Agarwal's spot.
His 39-ball 33 had the potential to turn into something bigger but got cut short due to the youngster's needless attempt to slog-sweep off-spinner Ashton Agar.
India slumped to 152-5 after Gill's dismissal, only to be rescued by the 150-run sixth-wicket partnership between Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja.
Lack of early breakthroughs with the new ball
The poor bowling stats of Jasprit Bumrah (3 matches, 29.3 overs, three wickets at an average of 48.75) and Mohammed Shami (2 matches, 19 overs, four wickets at an average of 33) indicated the key reason behind Aussies putting up record totals back-to-back at SCG.
Both the bowlers failed to persist with the wicket-to-wicket line and length despite it troubling Warner and Finch. They got cut and pulled for boundaries.
Steve Smith (216 runs in three innings at a strike rate near 150) was particularly merciless. Even Glenn Maxwell (167 runs in three matches at a strike rate of 194.19) used Shami and Bumrah's inconsistent spells to full effect in the final 20 overs.
Bumrah, however, came back strongly at the final ODI with his spell of 43-2 in 9.3 overs.
His devastating yorker ended a Maxwell hurricane (38-ball 59) in the 45th over and turned the tide in the visitors' favour. Still, his horror run after a brilliant IPL made India's biggest strength- fast bowling - its biggest weakness.
Saini: Trump card or weak link?
Navdeep Saini's stats after the two back-to-back SCG run-fests read: 17 overs, 173 runs and only one wicket. He persisted with the tactic of 'peppering' the Aussies with short-pitched stuff and paid dearly.
In the third ODI, when T Natarajan was given his international debut, he showed that his superb IPL 2020 run (16 wickets in 16 games) wasn't a one-off.
Natarajan pegged back the Australians by dismissing opener Marnus Labuschagne in the fifth over and then Ashton Agar in the 48th over.
Despite going for 18 runs in the 44th over, Natarajan conceded just eight in next two overs. It put more pressure on the home side and they subsequently disintegrated in front of Bumrah and Shardul Thakur.
Natarajan's yorkers and variations left the fans with the question - Would the series' outcome have been different if he had played all three games?
The Pandya confusion
The Baroda all-rounder ended the three-match series as India's highest run-scorer (210 runs at an average of 105.00).
His two best knocks were the 76-ball-90 that kept India in the hunt for sometime during their record 375-run chase in the first ODI and then the match-winning 92-run knock at Canberra.
While he solved the number six puzzle, there was a mystery around his role as the fourth seamer.
In the first ODI, he didn't bowl despite Chahal, Shami, Bumrah, Saini and Jadeja being taken to the cleaners. The very next game saw him bowling four overs and giving away just 24 runs while claiming Steve Smith's all-important wicket. Fans were left surprised by Kohli's decision of not giving few more overs to Pandya despite this.
Chahal's forgettable trip
The leggie, whose best bowling figures of 42/6, came against the same Aussies during the 2018/19 tour, wasn't that bowler this time around.
He gave away 160 runs in 19 overs (taking both the SCG ODIs together) and could manage only one wicket. In fact, his 10-0-89-1 in the first ODI was the worst spell ever by an Indian spinner in the 50-over format.
While his RCB teammate and fellow leg spinner Adam Zampa became the series' highest wicket-taker (seven scalps), Chahal got dispatched over the boundary ropes by Aussies with ease.
Kuldeep Yadav's brilliant ten-over spell of 57-1 in the final ODI posed further uncomfortable questions on why the team management had ignored the Chinaman at the SCG.
India managed to salvage some pride in the T20s, winning it 2-1 and continuing their no-series-loss-since-the-2019-Caribbean-tour record. Still, there were a few grey areas, mostly in the batting.
Rahul shines; inconsistent Dhawan a worry
KL Rahul, the Orange Cap winner of IPL 2020 (670 runs in 14 innings) continued his good streak in Australia too.
When Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Manish Pandey and Sanju Samson misfired on a two-paced track at Canberra's Manuka Oval, Rahul's 40-ball 51 and Jadeja's 23-ball 44 helped India to put up a match-winning 161-7.
In the next game at Sydney, the Karnataka batsman dominated most part of the 56-run opening partnership.
Compared to Rahul, Dhawan had a pale run. After being done in by a Mitchell Starc yorker in the first match, he played a match-winning 36-ball 52 at Sydney.
However, in the final encounter, with India chasing 187 for a clean sweep, Dhawan threw away a stable start of 21-ball-28 and despite the 74-run second wicket partnership between him and Kohli, the left-hander's departure opened the door for the Aussies.
Dhawan's sudden dip in form now puts him in danger of getting relegated as the third opener, with Rahul very much occupying a key role in Kohli and co's blueprint for next year's World T20.
Middle-order mess
Rahul's form gave the team management a problem of plenty at the top. But the middle order emerged as a new area of concern. Sanju Samson could manage only 48 runs. Despite an impressive strike rate of 141.18, the wicketkeeper-batsman's attacking mindset became his bane.
The form of Shreyas Iyer (12 runs in two games) and Manish Pandey (Just two runs in his solitary outing) too did not inspire confidence. It was skipper Kohli (173 runs in three innings) from whose bat the bulk of middle-order contributions came.
Mayank Agarwal (424 runs in 11 IPL games this year) got surprisingly 'rested' despite Samson's and Pandey's poor show.
While the result shows 2-1 in India's favour, still an out-of-form middle-order will be on top of the team management's priority list in the next few games.
Natarajan adds more teeth to the fast bowling department
After impressing everyone with his opening show in the final ODI, Natarajan became India's X-factor in the shortest format too, with his Yorkers and effective variations.
Apart from being the highest wicket-taker (six wickets in three games), Natarajan's spell of 30-3 and 20-2 in Canberra and Sydney ensured the Men-In-Blue's second T20 series win down under.
His solid show gives comfort to Kohli and the management amid Bhubaneswar Kumar's injury.
Pandya India's new number six but what about depth in the lower order?
Talking about India's 2-1 series victory, it would be unjust to ignore Hardik Pandya's contributions. In the all-important second T20 at Sydney, when the target of 195 looked dicey after Kohli's dismissal at the 17th over, Pandya, along with Iyer knocked off the remaining 46 runs in the last 21 deliveries.
What was special about Pandya's 22-ball 42 was that despite not having his usual timing, he waited and eventually cashed in on the inexperience of Aussie bowling.
However, Ravindra Jadeja missing the remainder of the series due to a concussion exposed some chinks in India's batting armoury.
In the final ODI, all-rounder Washington Sundar could score only seven runs in the six balls he faced and despite Shardul Thakur's seven-ball-17 at the other end, it was a 12-run heartbreak for the visitors.