But he didn’t throw it away, didn’t attempt the tempting but fatal upper cut to third man. Instead he dug in and tried to get behind the line. He was like a writer with writer’s block, where three metaphors would have presented themselves he was looking into the thesaurus for words. But he still wrote his essay. There was a message there for younger, flashier players who, unable to complete even a limerick exited with just a “There was a young man from India” on their sheet.

It was here that India’s reserve strength let them down, or maybe it just doesn’t exist. Virender Sehwag grows increasingly uni-dimensional, the ‘V’ from cover to mid-on replaced by the one from third man to point. He should have been playing a leadership role by now,

the tough man standing up first to the conditions and the opposition. Maybe he should get the benefit of the doubt for the injury at Durban, maybe, but not much else. He needs to find a solution to playing one-day cricket.

Two bright young men struggled and another fine cricketer dipped. There is now only one way ahead for Mohammad Kaif and that is to score big hundreds for Uttar Pradesh. He only has seven in first class cricket and that does his case no favours. He is young and can still return a better cricketer. But life has a way of forcing you to do the hard yards.

That is what it is doing to Irfan Pathan who is looks increasingly lost. He has got much from life in the last two years and now some tough questions are being asked of him. The beautiful curving inswinger has, like all those wonderful dreams, vanished; like Ashish Nehra’s did. Many reasons can be ascribed to it; the speed of his run-up, the lower delivery point but I suspect they are all by-products of a troubled mind. It is a downward spiral. Loss of form leads to self-doubt that prevents further learning. He will break out of it but time is running out. These are important ten days for him.

... contd.