India let England escape twice

Trent Bridge: One day, when India's cricketers are old and grey, they may look back on the Trent Bridge Test of 2011 and wonder exactly what happened.

They could still, of course, pull off a run chase to match their epic win against England in Chennai in December 2008, when they knocked off 387 with six wickets to spare. But rare is the occasion when one team can dominate two-thirds of the first day and three-quarters of the second and still find itself contemplating defeat.

Twice in this Test India have had their boot on England's throat; twice they displayed a lack of ruthlessness not usually associated with champions.

The first moment came when England took tea on day one at 124 for eight. Pretty well down and very nearly out, they rallied with the kind of tail-end batting from Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann that Duncan Fletcher, during his time as England coach, would have regarded with pride.

Then, on the second evening, India reached 267 for four in the evening sunshine. Jonathan Trott had gone off with a shoulder injury; Swann had just bowled one of his worst spells in an England shirt. Andrew Strauss's team was fraying at the edges. At which point Broad claimed five wickets for no runs in 16 balls. In between, Tim Bresnan added the wicket of Rahul Dravid, and although England lost Alastair Cook before the close, India had allowed the momentum to slip through their grasp.

Yesterday, as first Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan, then Matt Prior, ran India's fielders ragged, all their bowlers' good work on day one and Dravid's hundred for the ages on day two felt like a wasted effort.

Their mood has not been helped in this game by some close shaves with the decision review system, a concept the Indian board has regarded with a suspicion bordering on contempt, but which would have spared Harbhajan Singh the middle victim in Broad's rabble-rousing hat-trick on Saturday evening.

India's mistrust of Hawk-Eye led to a pre-series agreement whereby the DRS was available for catches only, yet the folly of that arrangement was plain when Harbhajan thick-edged Broad into his pads and could do nothing about the injustice.

It was ironic, then, that Hot Spot the infra-red heat-seeking technology regarded by everyone, India included, as foolproof may have come to V.V.S. Laxman's aid on Saturday morning when England were convinced he had nicked Jimmy Anderson to Prior.

And yet Hot Spot owner Warren Brennan is on record as admitting that his machinery is only 90-95 per cent accurate less precise, by any rational measure, than Hawk-Eye. As insults continued to be traded on Twitter following former England captain Michael Vaughan's suggestion or a joke, he claimed that Laxman had smeared the side of his bat with Vaseline to disguise any edges, Brennan said he would be conducting tests to see whether this is possible.

"I would imagine that Vaseline would restrict the friction of the ball hitting the bat so if you reduce the friction you are going to reduce the Hot Spot," Brennan told Cricinfo. "That is pure and simple physics."

"Often the outside of the bat has a layer of some sort of coating. Now if you put extra layers on the bat that might do the same thing. As long as it is a harder type of surface then you will get the Hot Spot. But if it is a soft, absorbent type of material then that will probably reduce the friction. It might take us a week or even longer to test all possibilities."

But by Sunday night, with debate raging over the Bell run-out that never was, and England passing 400 runs in a day, the scheduled arrival in this country today of opening batsman Virender Sehwag, back from a shoulder injury, felt less and less relevant. Sehwag should have been marching out at Edgbaston next week with the series poised beautifully at 1-1. Instead, England will fancy their chances of arriving in Birmingham two up with two to play and more than half an eye on that No 1 ranking.