The sense of urgency was unmistakable as the sun set behind the PCA Stadium on Tuesday. The match, meandering towards a dull draw, was called off early in the evening on the fifth day to help in transporting the bulky red-and-blue baggage of the English team to their chartered flight, which was set to leave at 9.30 pm for Dubai.

The Indians looked pretty eager too as they rammed in the overs required for play to be called off an hour ahead of schedule with England at 64/1. With the Pakistan tour called off, this is the longest break for Team India since 2006, but Subramanium Badrinath and Murali Vijay were all set to hop on to the early morning flight to play some domestic cricket after two weeks in the nets, and Rahul Dravid was ready to head for Mumbai to reiterate that his first-innings knock here was no mirage.

Not far behind

Now that the series is over, the extra policeman are suddenly missing from the Chandigarh streets, and the Taj hotel is no longer a fortress. Coming to India after the terror attacks, England played some hard cricket, and though they were involved in two Tests as compared to the four Australia that had played earlier this year, the competition was twice as riveting.

Contrary to perception, the visitors didn’t merely make a symbolic appearance, but dominated five out of 10 match-days in this series. Kevin Pietersen may not have laid his hands on the trophy, losing 1-0, but England did succeed in halting skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s winning steak by forcing a draw here in Mohali. They matched India in individual performances as well. Pietersen’s 144 in Mohali was as special as Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar’s knocks had been in Chennai, Andrew Strauss’s two centuries in Chennai were comparable with Gautam Gambhir’s 179 and 97 here, and Andrew Flintoff, Stuart Broad and James Anderson bowled at par with Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma.

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