With that uncomfortable hour and-a-half to deal with in the last session and his team still reeling under the collective trauma of conceding 626 runs, Pakistan opener Yasir Hameed realised on reaching the pitch that he was ill-equipped to take guard.

He frantically waved to the dressing room, all the while pointing to his groin, asking for an abdomen guard that he had inexplicably forgotten to wear.

That, in a way, summed up Pakistan in this Test match so far. Like Hameed, they too were grossly ill-equipped — slightly unfortunate too — as they were dangerously exposed in this deciding game for the series.

At the end of Day Two Pakistan, at 86/1, were still 540 runs in arrears. India seemed to have batted their rivals out of the game as they eye the Asian Ashes win at home after 27 years.

But in years to come, Anil Kumble’s first series as captain — and that too against Pakistan — will be remembered for Sourav Ganguly’s dream run and the launch of Yuvraj Singh’s Test career, and less for the visitors’ faux pas. Decades later, one might be puzzled while scrolling down the scoreboard of the 2007 India-Pakistan third Test: The Indian innings would show scores like 239 (Sourav), 169 (Yuvraj) and 102 (Irfan), but there would also be some unusual entries in Pakistan bowling analyses.

Among the bowlers will figure names like Yasir Hameed, Salman Butt and Younis Khan — the frontline bowlers — who shared between them 19 overs. Pace spearhead Shoaib Akhtar’s bowling would show merely 10 overs — as many as Butt has bowled, and 29 overs less than the over-worked debutant Yasir Arafat who took 5/168.

... contd.