CRICKET:With two days still to play, and the weather set fair, England will have to bat their breathable, fast-wicking, durable, polypropylene almond rocks off to save the second Test. Asked to score 284 even to make India bat again, they were given 16 overs in the evening sunlight on a pitch that throughout the day had played slower and with less obvious spite than in their first innings but which was already showing signs of uneven bounce.
If Andrew Strauss, with 21, and Alastair Cook, on 17, were able to negotiate steadfastly through to the close in adding 43 without being troubled unduly, the spin of Anil Kumble, in particular, awaits today, so life is not about to get any easier. The task for England is straightforward enough but one which will test their mental fortitude to the full.
India's lead may not be as substantial as at one time appeared possible, but unless the pitch is to fall to pieces with unexpected haste on the final day, England have effectively been batted out of the match. Realistically they are unlikely to reach parity until late this afternoon and unless the issue is forced by total dismissal early tomorrow, that would never allow themselves enough time to bowl India out again.
Survival then is the imperative, but that should not mean adopting a negative attitude; even defensive strokes can, and indeed should, be played with a sense of purpose. To be sure of keeping the series at level pegging for the final Test at The Oval on Thursday week, they must occupy the crease for a further five sessions.
India's dominance in this match has come about not so much from a superior bowling performance in dismissing England for 198, as in the level of skill and understanding of what was required when they batted. England's seam bowlers, and the indefatigable Ryan Sidebottom in particular, performed well enough, passed the bat on numerous occasions but found the techniques of India's middle order, vastly experienced and highly credentialed, altogether better than their own.
Sachin Tendulkar's 91, determined and technically foolproof over four and a quarter hours, ended in the first over after lunch by a poor piece of umpiring judgment of a kind that might send the Stock Exchange in Mumbai crashing - "Roll up, roll up, get your Simon Taufel effigies here". He had shown how the very best learn from their mistakes: at Lord's he had exploited the square areas more than is wise in conditions where the ball moves extravagantly; here, he used the V from extra cover to midwicket.
There were 79 good runs, too, from Sourav Ganguly, getting in the sort of forward stride that Strauss might do well to note. His innings ended as he flicked outside his leg stump and was deemed by Taufel - if not TV replay - to have touched the ball on its way to Matthew Prior.
VVS Laxman then made 54 runs so elegantly that they might have been fashioned by a Paris couturier, the fifth half-century of the innings, before becoming becalmed for seven scoreless overs and another of Prior's five victims.
Each batsman had looked set for a hundred: none reached it, so India's eventual 481 was something of an underachievement given their lofty perch of 409 for four shortly before tea.
The England bowlers were by no means diminished after their exemplary performance in the first Test, and the final figures did truly reflect a fair distribution of reward. The spell bowled by Sidebottom before lunch was as good as any he has bowled. He tested Tendulkar to the full and his single wicket of Mahdendra Singh Dhoni was little less than a travesty. James Anderson also beat the bat regularly with no fortune.The third seamer, Tremlett, has the capacity to look dangerous simply with the extra bounce he generates and later in the innings, when he helped frustrate and then dismissed Laxman, before snaring Kumble as well, he put in his best work of an innings that had seen him bowl 40 overs.
Once more, though, the most successful of the bowlers was Monty Panesar. He has twirled better than he did here but still collected four wickets, although two of them served to finish the India innings in a manner that used to be seen as the cherry on the cake for the hard-working fast bowler. Even when below his best Panesar remains a phenomenon.
Guardian Service
Overnight: England 198 (Z Khan 4-59). India 254-3 (K D Karthik 77, W Jaffer 62, S R Tendulkar 57 no).
India First Innings
S R Tendulkar lbw b Collingwood 91
S C Ganguly c Prior b Anderson 79
V V S Laxman c Prior b Tremlett 54
M S Dhoni c Prior b Sidebottom 5
A Kumble c Prior b Tremlett 30
Z Khan not out 10
R P Singh lbw b Panesar 0
S Sreesanth lbw b Panesar 2
Extras b16 lb16 w1 nb1 pens 0 34
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Total (158.5 overs) 481
Fall: 1-147, 2-149, 3-246, 4-342, 5-409, 6-414, 7-464, 8-473, 9-474.
Bowling: Sidebottom 36 11 75 1, Anderson 33 4 134 1, Tremlett 40 13 80 3, Collingwood 16 3 59 1, Panesar 33.5 8 101 4.
England Second Innings
A J Strauss not out 21
A N Cook not out 17
Extras b2 lb1 w1 nb1 pens 0 5
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Total 0 wkts (16 overs) 43
To Bat: M P Vaughan, K P Pietersen, P D Collingwood, I R Bell, M J Prior, C T Tremlett, R J Sidebottom, J M Anderson, M S Panesar.
Bowling: Khan 5 2 14 0, Sreesanth 3 0 10 0, R P Singh 4 2 4 0, Kumble 3 0 10 0, Ganguly 1 0 2 0.
