When will they ever learn?

India could still win this game despite having to endure an abysmal opening day. At Chennai in 2001, when Matthew Hayden and Steve Waugh were batting at stumps with the scoreboard showing 326 for 3, they went on to win by two wickets. But what today's display at Mohali showed was that India are no further along the learning curve when it comes to understanding home truths.

Chumps are fond of saying that you only learn from defeat. As Clive Woodward, England's rugby union coach, said recently, that's the biggest load of crap anyone ever came up with. Champion teams - Australia in cricket, England and New Zealand at rugby - rarely lose, so it's from their victories that they find the impetus to go even further.

India were once invincible at home, albeit on crumbling tracks that didn't even please their own pace bowlers, who bowled a couple of overs and were then shunted aside for the remainder of the game. It was South Africa that came here three years ago, and emphatically ended a winning streak that dated back to April 1987. They did it cleverly, by blunting the Indian spin threat and batting with tremendous discipline. In doing so, they offered a blueprint to every other touring team that visited these shores.

Australia would have succeeded too in 2001, had they not been so anxious to impose their dominance on every session. On the sub-continent, the tortoise always performs better than the hare, and an inability to understand that lesson led to defeats in Kolkata - when they had to bat less than a day to save the game - and Chennai. Anyone who thought India were a vastly superior side as a result were just deluding themselves.

For a decade and more now, India have been playing the same old concerto on a violin that has just one string - spin. The problem is that touring teams have the note sheet in front of them now, and their own adaptations are often more successful than the desi version. Only a nitwit would have imagined that New Zealand would roll over and play dead on slow, turning tracks - a cursory look at a video of their Sri Lanka tour would have shown otherwise.

Muttiah Muralitharan - easily the pick of the world's offspinners - picked up 13 wickets in two Tests, but only four of them were top-order batsmen. More importantly, his strike-rate - which had been less than 50 in home conditions against New Zealand - ballooned to 75 balls per wicket. If they could handle the best in the business, it should have been evident that Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble wouldn't cause sleepless nights.

Mark Richardson told Wisden Cricinfo that New Zealand hadn't played any quality spin bowling so far on this tour. Could you get a more damning indictment than that? Well, perhaps a scorecard that reads 247 for 1 after 90 overs.

Give credit where it's due though. New Zealand have been magnificent, both in the manner in which they saved the first Test and how they have started this one. Some of us chuckled contemptuously when we heard of Ashley Ross's acclimatisation plans before the tour, which included practise on turning tracks and even ambience simulation. The joke's well and truly on us now.

But then again, we're stupid people who pay no attention to history. Matthew Hayden, whose clunky footwork was never naturally suited to playing spin, came over on an Australian Academy tour in 1998, and received advice from Bishan Singh Bedi and Srinivas Venkataraghavan on how to adapt to slow turners. Before the 2001 tour, when he sat out the VB Series one-dayers, he asked the groundsman at Allan Border Field in Brisbane to prepare Indian-type pitches for him to practise on. The result? A mere 549 runs in three Tests, and utter dominance over every bowler he came across.

Because India's preparation for assignments abroad is so shoddy - witness repeated humiliations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa - we tend to assume that everyone else is just as blasé about it. Well, now we know the truth, thanks to Richardson and Lou Vincent, who came within 8 runs of overhauling the biggest opening partnership by a touring side in India - the 239 added by West Indies' Allan Rae and Jeff Stollmeyer at Chennai in 1948-49.

It's interesting to note that both coach and captain have spoken out against the pitches prepared by the curators. But the complaints are for the wrong reasons. Inability to force results on tracks like these should get the message across...that it's high time we added more strings to the violin.

In Australia, no two pitches play alike. Adelaide is a batting paradise, Sydney offers plenty of help to the slow bowlers, while Brisbane and Perth favour both the fast bowlers and batsmen comfortable with the horizontal bat shots. As for Melbourne, it changes character as often as the weather.

Unless our groundsmen are allowed to prepare such varied surfaces, we'll be forced to listen to the same old boring concerto. And be no closer to the oft-declared aim of being the world's best side. As Pete Seeger sang, When will they ever learn?