Rashid's relief and a dying dream

There must have been nights when Adil Rashid lay in bed thinking about a catch he dropped on this tour, in Visakhapatnam. It cost 111 runs, and some suggest the Test series turned right there. England, who had begun with a draw Rajkot, lost every match that followed and the reprieved batsman Virat Kohli hasn't stopped tormenting them yet. He was at long leg when he made that mistake then, and was at long leg again in Kanpur; the sight of the ball coming at him both familiar and butterfly-inducing in the stomach. Nevertheless, Rashid ran forward, slid smoothly on his knees, picked up a catch that was rather more difficult than the one he missed two months earlier and India had lost Yuvraj Singh, one of their power hitters, with 10 overs still left to bat. Not that Rashid could indulge in his relief straight away, the umpires wanted a closer look to make sure it was cleanly taken. England decided that was enough excitement for their premier legspinner and did not have him bowl.

The dream for most kids as they shadow practice in the backyard is to smack a fast bowler back over his head for six. The sanctity of that is under serious threat as the age of 360 degree batsmen gains steam. Sam Billings, as early as the second over of the innings, waddled to his right, head perfectly still, eyes firmly on the target, and for his trouble he got the perfect delivery to show off his skills. Jasprit Bumrah pitched it on a length which in the mind of the modern batsmen means it is ripe to be scooped and Billings got so much bat on it that the ball sailed past the boundary behind him.

England are in enemy territory. They have had to worry about India's spinners. They have had to fret over the size of their totals. The toss. And Kohli. Kedar Jadhav joined the list. Even the dew played against them. Finally, at the tail end of a long series, just as Eoin Morgan's men thought they had a proper count of all the obstacles they faced, another popped up. The first sighting was in the ODIs, in Cuttack, and Ben Stokes copped a face full of it. In Kanpur, Jason Roy was caught in the firing line. He began courting danger when he decided to chase a lofted Kohli square drive to the boundary and eventually crashed right into it. Poor England. They thought they had planned for everything. But never did they see the ball boys, not the one who hit Stokes on the mouth last week, nor the one who interfered with Roy's fielding effort tonight.

It was all in the sound. At first, it was thwack, the ball pinging off the middle of Suresh Raina's bat as a length ball from Ben Stokes disappeared into the night sky and the Green Park faithful erupted for one of their own. But then they were silenced, by a crash, and the sight of flashing red, as the next ball from the angry fast bowler was aimed at the base of leg stump and the batsman had shuffled too far across and was clean bowled by a rip-roaring yorker.