For a team that in recent times has built up a bit of a reputation for grabbing even half chances, India did itself no favours at the start of the final session.
Kevin Petersen, who had before tea already used up one of his nine lives, lost another when he had a huge slog at a Kumble top spinner outside his off stump. The ball flared off the toe of his bat and Sreeshanth, at cover, made a total mess of the skier.
That Sreeshanth was at cover is itself a story -- he was covering for Kaif, doing duty at short square. And in Kumble's next over, he gave one more indication of why he is as bad up close as he is brilliant in midfield.
It was in Pakistan, off Sreeshant incidentally, that his fallibility in close-catching positions first showed, when he missed an easy overhead catch at slip.
The point was made then, the point is being repeatedly emphasized now: Kaif's habit of jumping just as the batsman plays his shot gets him moving when he is in the outfield; up close, all it means is that he is in the air as the edge flies at him, and has neither feet on the ground to give him a stable base to dive off.
An over after he should have had Petersen, Kumble forced the miscue off Cook's inner edge, and the ball flashed right between Kaif's legs as he was in mid air.
In between all the fun and games, Petersen lashed Irfan Pathan through extra cover to bring up his 50 (63 balls); Cook sliced Kumble wide of point to bring up his second 50 in his debut Test (132 balls) and when Harbhajan replaced Pathan and got Cook's edge off his first ball, the resulting edge flew wide of the sole slip down to third man for a four to bring up the 100 of the partnership (162 balls).
The 200 came up almost immediately thereafter, and India went on the defensive, slowing things down with on-field conversations after every other ball, and getting Kumble to go round the wicket into the rough outside the right-hander's leg stump.
Clearly, the missed chances had taken the wind out of the fielding side; as they have done on similar occasions in the past, the team's attitude seemed a resigned, karmic acceptance of all things bad and a determination to push the declaration back as much as they could.
Dravid continued with an in-out field, keeping two at least up close catching and enough in the ring to keep easy singles out of the equation; Kumble and Harbhajan continued to draw the occasional gasps with deliveries that spun and turned, but somehow, it all failed to coalesce into effective, wicket-taking bursts.
Petersen, cramping a bit in the heat and humidity, broke the deadlock in the 66th over. To the first ball from Kumble, he ran around the ball and blasted a drive past Kumble before the bowler could blink; next ball, he stayed back and slapped one from outside leg, against the turn, over midwicket in a shot that was all power and naked aggression; a ball later, he went on the front foot and slog swept Kumble again through midwicket -- the 'defensive' line had been dismantled in the space of four deliveries.
The relentless Kumble finally took Petersen out (by rights, the fourth time of asking) when he bounced a top spinner out of the rough, forcing Petersen to miscue the slog sweep and put it up high for Dravid to run around the slip and do the catching himself, around where leg slip would have been (87 off 110; 221/3 England; partnership 124.
Kumble then fired a top spinner in on a very full length, nailed Collingwood on the pad in front of middle stump, and Aleem Dar -- an umpire who has if anything erred more on the side of the bowler, thus far -- turned down a plumb shout, and added insult to injury by indicating with a shake of the head that he thought it was going outside leg. Kumble's face, captured at that moment and framed, could go up in any gallery over the bold-face caption: Incredulity.
Dravid's face could have gone right up there alongside Kumble's, this time labeled 'Anger', when a couple of overs later Harbhajan held one back a shade, induced Cook into driving at him too early, and missed the simplest return catch you could imagine.
The off spinner, throughout this game, has used all his little toys -- the big spinning off break, the bounce, the camouflaged doosra, the one that hustles through straight with the arm; but with all that, he hasn't in his demeanor looked like the bowler who, earlier, would buzz all over and around you and harass batsmen to their doom.
Just to rub it in, as play went into over time, Harbhajan induced an edge off Cook and this time, Rahul Dravid at slip got his hand to it and let it go. The one good thing about it is that Bajji, Sreeshanth et al know the captain won't ream them out for their own follies, when the team meets tonight (Judging by his expression as play wound to a close, though, Kumble might have a few words to say).
A strange aspect of the final hour, to me, was England's play in the final hour. When it got to 230 and stretched its lead to 300, 16 overs remained in the game; yet neither the well-set Cook nor the one-day trained Collingwood made any overt effort to push the pedal to the floor -- as you would expect of a team granted, partly through its own gritty efforts, partly through Indian fumbles, an opportunity here to force India onto the back foot and, who knows, maybe even trigger a collapse (Karachi, after all, is not that distant a memory).
A maiden off Harbhajan, calmly played out by Collingwood with 11 overs left in the day, made you wonder could it be that England is not looking at a declaration even at close, but intends to bat on tomorrow?
Alistair Cook, whose patience in this debut Test has been exemplary, ambled his way to a century (235 deliveries) on debut -- dropped catches or no, it was a superb effort from a player who, just a few days back, was playing A level cricket in the Caribbean. And it was lovely to see the Nagpur crowd, not just the English section, come to its feet in salute.
Very strangely, Virender Sewhag was, out of the cold, given the last over of the day; that he was coming intoit with no warning showed, in a no ball off the first ball that Collingwood smashed over long on for six. Cook, later in the over, hoiked him to the midwicket fence. It was a strange move, to take out Kumble at that point and close out the day with the part-timer who, interestingly, hadn't been used all day.
England closed the day on 297/3, 142 runs came for one wicket off 36 overs in the session.
England are now 367 ahead and defeat is 99.9 per cent ruled out; now to see if the visitors push for a win.
In passing, a thought -- it has been a while now since India's spinners managed the sort of stranglehold they were famed for in the past, in home conditions. (Perhaps, in context of the number of catches that went down, it is not fair to say this now, but still )
Javagal Srinath in the commentary box made a good point when he said that the Nagpur pitch hadn't cracked up, contrary to expectations -- which meant that the spinners would be a threat only if you let them.
In the past, touring teams in fact allowed Indian spinners to run riot; they faced the prospect of playing spin in Indian conditions with trepidation -- and with negative, self-deprecating comments weeks before the tour had even begun.
Increasingly, however, top sides have learnt to send their players to India on side tours; learnt to cope with spin and, simultaneously, most Indian wickets have become better, they don't any more turn square on day one and crumble into dust by day three.
Long story short, 'win with spin' has reached the end of its shelf-life as a strategy for home conditions; maybe it is time the think tank stopped picking two spin-two pace by rote, and letting themselves in for days (and they are getting increasingly frequent in recent times) where they can't seem to buy a wicket for love or money.
