CRICKET/India v England, first Test: The first Test burst into life midway through the final session, just as it appeared to be drifting towards an inevitable draw for which England may already have settled and which ultimately both sides may have been relieved to get.
Having declared overnight and set India an unlikely 368 to win in 90 overs, Matthew Hoggard, for the second time in the game, claimed Virender Sehwag, this time without a run from the bat.
It proved a false dawn: Wasim Jaffer again played with distinction, and, with the captain Rahul Dravid, batted through the remainder of the morning, all afternoon and into the evening, a second-wicket stand of 167 securing at worst their position of parity to take into the second Test in Mohali.
Instead, it proved a springboard for an attempt to heist the match from England, mooted no doubt during tea. It began with the dismissal of Dravid, bowled by Monty Panesar. The Indian captain had already been given notice with a reverse sweep the ball before when a delivery spat out of the rough and pegged back his off stump.
If the crowd roared their anticipation of Sachin Tendulkar's appearance for the last rites, they were more muted to find Irfan Pathan striding to the middle instead. After Jaffer calmly completed a worthy maiden hundred, and then drilled a catch to extra cover, Pathan, joined now by the cult figure of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, swung freely for his 35, before he skied to Andrew Strauss at deep midwicket and received a send-off from the bowler Andy Flintoff that may cost the captain a fine from the match referee.
The danger for England now was that the required run-rate of about eight for the last 15 or so overs was within range for a hitter of Dhoni's capacity (think of a muscular Shahid Afridi: in practice, Dhoni hit the ball a colossal distance in the air, almost from one end of the ground to the other) allied to the one-day skills (for this had become such a contest) of Tendulkar, now at the wicket.
One exploratory over from Ian Blackwell at the pair was enough and yielded 16 runs as Tendulkar ran through his repertoire. Dhoni failed to live up to his billing as the Bihar Basher, flailing for half an hour before flat-batting a catch to deep mid-off, Strauss's third in a row.
If the target was still in range, just, then the failing light, as a storm cloud obscured the sky, and Steve Harmison's yorker that spread-eagled the stumps of Harbhajan Singh, settled the issue. VVS Laxman reached the middle but did not face a ball before the teams walked off, shook hands and agreed on the draw with 11 overs still to be bowled.
It made for scintillating cricket, and the result might still have been open had the light not intervened. At 260 for six, India still required 108, not impossible if unlikely even for Tendulkar, who had reached 28 from only 19 balls. They would have felt, though, that batting out time, with Laxman, Mohammad Kaif and Anil Kumble there as insurance, would have been a simple task on a pitch that had become morbidly slow and, in the absence of reverse swing either with the original ball or that which England managed to get substituted, offered little of value for the pacemen or spinners.
The new ball, though, was due at the end of the following over, and with four more wickets to take in 10 overs to follow, Hoggard's use of it could yet have proved decisive. He bowled superbly all match and his dismissal of Sehwag was a model of planning and execution. In the first innings, the opener, shrewdly set up by Hoggard, had drilled a heavily disguised slower ball to extra-cover. This time,spotting that Sehwag was still not averse to driving, he moved a fielder across from the leg side to short extra-cover - "on the drive" as it is known - but instead of feeding the stroke with a repeat of the first innings, ducked an in-swinger inside the loose stroke and knocked back middle and off stumps. Simply brilliant.
Scoreboard:
India v England, Nagpur
Overnight: India 323 (M Kaif 91, W Jaffer 81, A Kumble 58; M Hoggard 6-57). England 393 (P Collingwood 134 no, A Cook 60; S Sreesanth 4-95) and 297-3 dec (Cook 104 no, K Pietersen 87).
India Second Innings
W Jaffer c Strauss b Flintoff 100
V Sehwag b Hoggard 0
R Dravid b Panesar 71
I Pathan c Strauss b Flintoff 35
M Dhoni c Strauss b Harmison 16
S Tendulkar not out 28
Harbhajan Singh b Harmison 7
Extras (lb3) 3
Total (6 wkts, 78.2 overs) ... 260
Fall of wickets: 1-1 2-168 3-198 4-215 5-252 6-260.
Did not bat: VVS Laxman, M Kaif, A Kumble, S Sreesanth.
Bowling: Hoggard 16-7-29-1, Harmison 17.2-4-48-2, Flintoff 17-2-79-2, Panesar 16-2-58-1, Blackwell 12-2-43-0.
India drew with England
