Seam-up Kumble enlivens drawn Test

The Bangalore Test was drifting to an uneventful conclusion when Anil Kumble decided to bounce Faisal Iqbal, who had made the most of fielders being in the circle to stroke a brisk half-century. Faisal responded with the pull, but was in a horrible position to play it. The top edge looped to mid-on where Ishant Sharma made no mistake. As Faisal trudged off, the scoreboard read 144 for 4. Pakistan were never going to get the 374 needed from 48 overs, but with just over 16 overs to be bowled, there appeared to be no immediate danger of defeat.

Kamran Akmal was the next man in, having already shared in two pivotal century partnerships with Misbah-ul-Haq. Kumble sized him up, and then rolled back the years to the days when he bowled medium pace as a young boy. A perfectly pitched leg cutter pegged back the off stump, and suddenly Pakistan were on the verge of a calamitous collapse.

Yasir Hameed had been cleaned up earlier in similar fashion, with a 109 km/hr delivery zipping through his defensive push. "I had to bowl medium-pace after 25 years to finally get some wickets here," said Kumble with a laugh after the game. "In hindsight, maybe I should have done it in the first innings as well."

The other Kumble brainwave was to bring on Yuvraj Singh instead of Harbhajan Singh from the Pavilion End. An armer cut short an aggressive cameo from Misbah, and the orthodox left-arm delivery breached the defence of Yasir Arafat. With 13 overs still to be bowled, defeat appeared imminent, but the two Mohammads, Yousuf and Sami, resisted for 10 balls before the umpires called a halt on account of poor light.

Over the next days, debates will rage across India about the timing of the Indian declaration, an hour into the second session. At lunch, the lead was already 310, and it's highly unlikely that a pursuit of that target in 64 overs would have been successful. But instead of calling a halt there, Kumble chose to bat on, calling it quits only once the out-of-form Dinesh Karthik had got his half-century. With the team for Australia being announced later in the afternoon, Karthik couldn't have chosen a better time to put runs on the board. Whether it did India's chances of winning any good though is open to debate.

Kumble was unapologetic about his choice later in the day. "I wanted to make sure we would win the series," he said. "On that pitch, what you needed to get wickets were 10 balls that kept low. That could have been over 40 overs or over 150. You can't predict it. We were confident that 45 overs would be enough, and if the weather hadn't played a role, I believe we would have won."

India's triumph in England was also overshadowed to an extent by talk about the timing of Rahul Dravid's declaration at The Oval. In the final analysis though, all that matters is what the record books show. Two big series, two victories. As Kumble said, the team is as well equipped as it could be to try and storm a fortress whose walls haven't been breached since the last batch of legends from the Caribbean took away the spoils in 1992-93.