How to score last night’s budget is all down to understanding the game being played. In cricketing parlance, this was no hit-and-giggle Twenty20. Rather, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has marched out to bat on the first day of a hot, mid-summer’s five-Test series, the long arc of the game on his mind as he prepares to craft a patient innings.

This budget was the all-important first session. A warm-up, a chance to get the eye trained, digest the starting fiscal position as a new line and length on an unfamiliar wicket, and test the mettle of the costed election commitments.