In Mitchell Johnson's hands, a Test match can alchemise into a season of Game of Thrones. For all the intricate and suspenseful build-up, it eventually comes down to one scene where everybody ends up in a pile on the floor. Dormant as a dragon for many sessions, Johnson awakened to turn this second Test match, first with bat and then with ball, each time within a matter of minutes.

The first eight overs of Saturday's play at the Gabba bear close description. Shane Watson opened from the Stanley Street end, not to overnight batsman Shikhar Dhawan but Virat Kohli. Things can happen quickly in Test cricket, but had a phantom dismissal taken place, quicker than the eye? No, Dhawan had been injured in the nets but, consistent with the rune-like emanations that come out of the Indian camp, Dhawan's wrist injury was rumoured to have been blamed on artificial net wickets, old turf net wickets, a doctored EA Sports Cricket 07 wicket, and understretched coir matting. To further muddy the waters, Kohli had also been injured in or by the nets, but he was out in the middle. The culprit, if there was one, had yet to be identified, but India should surely pick him for the next Test.

After all this, Watson's opening over to Kohli was a demure maiden.

From his favoured Vulture Street end, Johnson started with four uneventful deliveries to Cheteshwar Pujara, but the fifth, like an ominous first note of a bad guy's theme, climbed into the batsman's ribs, hit his glove and flew halfway to fine leg before bouncing away for four. Watson, now finding some swing on the first overcast and windy morning of the match, bowled a steady over, giving Kohli a single.

Then it all started. To the first ball of Johnson's next over, Kohli played a non-committal defensive shot, inside-edging onto his thigh and then his stumps. The wicketlessness of Johnson's bowling to that point owed a certain amount to bad luck. Kohli's edge could easily have rolled away with no more than a general "Ooh". They say a player makes his own luck, but sometimes luck makes a player. Now it had given Johnson its blessing.

Ajinkya Rahane always starts sketchily, playing at every ball. He reached for a two through cover, was beaten outside off stump, and top-edged a pull over slips. All of this hadtaken place before the end of Johnson's second over.

Watson bowled another maiden, to Pujara this time.

Neither Johnson nor Rahane is a player who will ever die wondering. The Indian right-hander threw his hands at a wide half-volley and crashed it straight to the boundary. Johnson then did a Johnson: the spray wide of the cut stuff followed by the perfect sternum-high bouncer, which Rahane parried self-protectively to gully.

Two balls – one defended, one nicked – were all Johnson needed to account for Rohit Sharma.

Watson was now replaced by Josh Hazlewood, whose fine debut became finer still when, second ball, M.S.Dhoni walked across and down the wicket and, on the way, was hit by a ball on its way to the stumps. One for 76 had, within the space of 19 balls, become 5 for 87.

What had happened to transform Johnson's bowling back to last year's vintage? The first explanation would be that his efforts in the first three innings of this series have not been below standard, just luckless. The second was that the cracks running down the wicket were widening, the bounce was growing capricious, and the overhead conditions were belatedly offering help. The final was that Johnson is a bowler of many moods and humours, which we always knew, but these moods and humours can also infect the batsmen, and once supreme confidence meets abject fear, cricketing magic takes place. The role of Watson was also important in sowing uncertainty, reiterated when he came back on, prompting another wicket at the other end, this time Ravi Ashwin falling to Mitchell Starc.

Effectively seven wickets down, India were still six: who should come out but Dhawan, resurrected like one of George RR Martin's White Walkers. A latecomer, seeing the overnight batsmen Dhawan and Pujara at the crease, might have been excused for thinking nothing was out of the ordinary except a malfunctioning scoreboard. But, as with Martin's byzantine plots, there  remained loose ends, and Johnson was soon back to tie them up.