Some stodge, some Sachin

It was a lot of action that ended in a draw. A battling lower-order hundred from Craig White, a masterpiece from Sachin Tendulkar, a scandalously efficient 99 from Marcus Trescothick, a 92 from his partner Mark Butcher, a labouring 10-for from Anil Kumble, a cunning fiver for Ashley Giles, an untypical VVS Laxman half-century and the continuing rediscovery of Javagal Srinath. There was slippy catching and sloppy umpiring. There were tactics, counter-tactics, and non-tactics. But it was all adding up.

For the best part of four days, the Test had simmered softly under the Ahmedabad sun, sauteed with the many flavours of the subcontinent. It could've finished as the spiciest dish of the winter. Instead, it was seasoned with a truckload of common sense. For India, there was a lead to be maintained. For England, there was a series not to be conceded yet. What eventually came out of Motera didn't taste sour; it didn't leave much of an aftertaste either.

Nonetheless, it was the Test that kept the tour in balance. It all started on day two, when White, England's man with a Masters in subcontinent cricket, was dropped on 45. And then on 63. And then on 67. And somewhere in between, there was a trickle onto his stumps that didn't drop the bails because Murphy says not all good things are dropped together. As India contemplated more ways to shoot themselves in the foot, England climbed up to the considerable heights of 407. They did whatever India let them do, and for that, credit to them.

More credit to them for not letting India do what they can on the baked batting strips at home. Matthew Hoggard bowled a relentless line to an off-side field, and Giles stayed over-the-wicket-into-the-rough most of the time. It was dour and ruthless and none of India's batsmen, bar one, had an answer. He was, inevitably, Tendulkar.

He was magnificently stoic at the start when his partners couldn't handle all the discipline thrown at them. And tongue-droppingly dominant once he had worked out all the angles, all the equations, in his head. One Hoggard over, where he picked 11 on-side runs with the wrists of a Ranji, the intent of a Richards and the impeccable balance of a Tendulkar, told the tale of a century that was nothing if not brilliant. Never had an 8-1 off-side field seemed so lopsided. It was the work of a man who always adjusted.

Laxman, meanwhile, went back five years when, as a 22-year old debutant on this ground, he gritted a crucial half-century with the lower order. Like then, nobody gasped at his strokes now. It was Laxman without frills, and very valuable.

But these were minor triumphs for India. Giles showed he could attack as well as he could defend and mopped up the tail as England ended 116 runs in front. Nasser Hussain's sternest test was still to come. Would he look to eke out a victory? If so, how? How many must India be made to chase? How much time must he give himself?

It worked itself out through a combination of positive batsmanship (Butcher, Hussain), unsuccessful slogging (the rest), more dropped catches, (Sourav Ganguly, Tinu Yohannan, Deep Dasgupta) and five wickets for Harbhajan Singh. On a pitch that was terrific for batting for long but terrible for scoring fast, 97 overs didn't give Hussain quite enough time to take 10 wickets, and 374 were far too many runs for India to have hunted down. (No team has chased more than 300 to win a Test in India).

Predictably, a stalemate ensued on the fifth day. Shiv Sunder Das and Dasgupta studiously saw out the morning session and virtually assured the draw India needed. Unwittingly, they also reached a position from where victory remained an improbable possibility.

At lunch, India needed 282 from 59 overs with 10 wickets in hand. They could have played as they had in the last 10 overs before lunch, when 37 runs came without a hint of risk. It would have tested Hussain, if not stretched him. But the shutters were downed, 48 runs came in 36 overs between lunch and tea, and the fate of the Test was sealed. The series had just come alive.

Occupational hazard You couldn't tell by their performance, but England had lost their best batsman before a ball was bowled. Graham Thorpe had been the cornerstone of their historic successes in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and had nurdled 62 runs amid the ruins of the second innings at Mohali. On the eve of this Test, he knocked on Hussain's door and told him he couldn't get through another match. His marriage was on the verge of collapse, and he needed to fly back to sort out a few issues. When, three days later, he said that it was because of "the nature and stresses of his job," it was a scary reminder of the hazards in the age of the professional. But even he would have felt a minor cheer in the way England never let another in a series of setbacks blow up into a crisis.

Fish or fowl? It's horridly hard to damn a man who stood up to be counted when virtually all around him shirked. In his first three matches, Dasgupta had already saved India a Test in South Africa and played a substantial part in winning one at Mohali. Both efforts had come with the bat; his keeping, full of errors, and based on a worryingly weak technique, left India grappling with an unique conundrum. One, two, three, four...the dropped catches kept piling up at Ahmedabad. That made it seven (including muffed stumpings) for the series, and there was still a Test to go.

Annus horribilis Slumps exist for umpires too. Ian Robinson almost incited New Zealand into lodging a formal protest with the ICC when he made two crucially wrong decisions (yes, one was Steve Waugh) on the final day of the series-decider at Perth. Here, he snapped a couple of vertebrae (Hussain and Vaughan) in England's spine before White and Dasgupta undid the damage. It capped a memorably bad year for umpires.