Sachin Tendulkar, in the game that saw him becoming the most capped player in Indian Test history, being booed off his home ground had to be the defining moment of the third session.
Personally, I am no fan of the fair weather approach to sports -- hosannas when the going is good, insulting headlines when the going gets bad is, to my mind, the worst possible manifestation of the age of instant gratification.
That said, if those boos were a reaction to the manner of dismissal as opposed to the man himself, you had to say it was merited -- and more.
India had already lost both openers. With the new ball swinging and seaming around, as it did for Munaf this morning, batting was going to be tough -- but not, by any stretch, impossible. The batting side needed its two most experienced practitioners to battle it out; not necessarily demolish the bowling because it wasn't out there begging to be hit, but to stem the rot first, then turn the game back in favor of the batting side.
Morning session | Afternoon session
From that position, and with that wealth of experience, to stay rooted on leg and middle stump and poke novice-like at a straight ball from James Anderson a foot or more outside off, doing nothing either in the air or off the wicket despite the best attempts of the commentators of the time to conjure up a reason for the dismissal, and to bottom edge tamely to the keeper, was an abdication of responsibility a crowd that has grown up on the man's majesty must have found difficult to stomach.
The Sunday crowd wanted a fight; what it got was mental capitulation from a man once famed for his dominance, and they clearly did not care too much for it, local icon or no.
The stage for his much-awaited entry was set by the two openers, who willingly worked with the England bowlers in stage-managing their own dismissals.
First Virender Sehwag -- and déjà vu time, as he produced an action replay of the Mohali first innings. Mathew Hoggard, operating with the brand new ball, went a touch wide of the crease to get the angle, and banged one in at pace. Sehwag, as at Mohali, moved into the ball like he had a target painted on his brow, rose with the ball as it bounced, got himself into the most awkward position possible, and kept raising his bat into line.
Clearly, Mohali hadn't taught him to get his head and bat out of the way. There it was the glove, here, the bat handle did the job and the ball lobbed nicely into the slip cordon, with Sehwag paying the price for attempting to bat out of character (Consider this -- how many times, even in the early stages of a Test, have you seen the same player lean back, bending away at the waist to get under it and ease balls of similar disposition to the third man fence?)
Next up, Wasim Jaffer. Hoggard switched ends, taking over from his captain, and banged another one down. This one was even less harmful than the one that did his partner hitting line of middle, it was angling nicely down to leg when Jaffer moved inside the line, then followed its path with his hands to run the ball off the open face of the bat for Geraint Jones to hold with ease down leg.
24/2 inside 12 overs; 28/2 inside 19, and it was left to Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh to show how it was done, in their own respective styles.
Dravid's is simple -- he backs his technique to cope with anything, irrespective of length, swing, seam, that is remotely close to his stumps; to the short stuff he drops his wrist almost as the ball lands on the short length and sways away or goes under. And when he spots palpable errors in line or length, he picks his shot and plays it within the percentages.
Yuvraj, in contrast, is the free spirit -- drives and flicks blunted James Anderson; within his first 14 deliveries at the crease he had gone past his captain, then 30 deliveries his senior. When Flintoff brought on Monty Panesar and Shaun Udal to prey on the batsman's supposed weakness against spin, he first drove, then cut Panesar; against Udal, he shut the bat face just a touch to take the edge out of the equation and drove him, straight as you please, twice in the over to force him out of the attack.
Which is not to suggest the earlier batsmen had to hit everything in sight -- Yuvraj didn't; nor did Dravid. But both -- Yuvraj more noticeably -- showed no sign of mental capitulation, no fear; instead, they absorbed the attack, blunted it, and played the game on their terms.
The 50 of the partnership (93 deliveries) underlined their contrasting approaches -- Dravid, clearly dug in for the long haul, contributed 18 off 47; Yuvraj, as clearly unwilling to be dictated to either by the match situation or the bowling, weighed in with 32 off 44.
Flintoff and Hoggard bowled brilliantly with the new ball. A highlight was the duel between the two captains. With Troy Cooley backstage, the England bowlers have through this series shown signs of doing rapid work on each Indian batsman, figuring out the best lines of attack and implementing them with focus.
To Dravid, early on, Flintoff produced a stream of late swinging deliveries on the very full length, bang on line with the stumps. Clearly, England believes that Dravid, like Ricky Ponting, tends to go a bit too far across early in his innings against pace and that he is thus vulnerable to the LBW -- on the day, it took all of the batsman's considerable skill to ward off that attack.
Against Yuvraj, Plan A appears to be to angle the ball, from back of a length, at pace across the southpaw, looking for him to edge the expansive drive when afforded length. He has fallen into that trap before, but here, he watched them go and when the short ball was straighter, ducked under it with time to spare.
Six overs remained unbowled at stumps, as India went in with Dravid on 37 (107) and Yuvraj on 32 (47) and the team on a healthier 89/3. The session, which produced 81 runs in 32 overs for the loss of three wickets, was clearly England's. The bowling side ran away with the first hour of the session; India fought back in the second hour but the three wickets going down turned the balance England's way and let India in for a long, hard climb without much of a safety net under them.
On the plus side, the only sign of threatening movement for England was with the new ball. This one is 37 overs old, in that indeterminate stage where it hasn't really begun to reverse; it gives the over night not outs a little edge going into the morning of day three.
Not much of a one -- but it is there.
By way of aside, the different ways a crowd gets into a game can be amusing. Towards the dying moments of the day, Dravid clipped a Flintoff full toss to midwicket, ran three quarters of the way down the track, for once found Yuvraj Singh facing the other way, raced back, and beat Kevin Pietersen's throw with inches to spare.
The third umpire was called in -- and though he needed three replays from two angles before making his call, the crowd needed just the one.
G-r-e-e-n, they kept yelling, g-r-e-e-nnnnnnnnnn!
Green it was, and the crowd promptly applauded its own judgment.
