Chennai’s red-clay pitch played perfectly into India’s hands as their spinners cleaned up Australia for 380 and 241 to bowl the home side to an eight-wicket victory on Tuesday.

The pitch had been prepared for several weeks. A bit of wear before the match appeared to be encouraged by the ground staff, judging by the way three of them were seen by AAP playing cricket with a tennis ball on the pitch a week before the match started.

On day one of the game last Friday, legspin great Shane Warne described it as a fifth-day wicket.

“Australia got selection wrong… Nadal is the best player on clay – he should have been selected !!,” Warne joked on Twitter.

The reality is that if Australia had a leggie like Warne or Stuart MacGill — or even offspinner Ashley Mallett (28 Test wickets at 19.1 in 1969-70 in India) for that matter — they would have been picked to play in Chennai.

Instead, they had offspinner Nathan Lyon who was bashed around for 3-215 in India’s first innings, and they had left-arm spinner Xavier Doherty running drinks, having taken 2-160 in Sheffield Shield cricket for Tasmania this summer.

No doubt, following Australia’s big loss in the first Test of the four-match series, much soul-searching is ahead and Doherty will be back under consideration.

“The wicket played better than it looked,” Clarke said on Tuesday.

“In both first innings, the wicket was pretty good for batting. In the second innings, as we thought, the wicket did deteriorate and spun and bounced a lot more, and the bounce was inconsistent.

“I like to see a result in Test cricket. The fact that the game went five days says to me it’s a pretty good Test-match wicket.”