Batting time, battling time - Gill and Rahul duel with the clock

There is perhaps nothing more absolute and objective than time. It takes one second for one second. Sixty of them will make a minute. There is no way around it. You can't do anything to make the earth move faster or slower. It is never more apparent than when you are so far behind in a Test that a draw is the only result possible for you, and you have to bat five sessions to earn it.

Against modern Test attacks, it is generally not possible to bat five sessions for a draw unless the conditions are your friend. You need it to be either devoid of lateral movement and uneven bounce, or you want it to run out of life so that things are happening too slowly off the surface. A bowler, the best of the series, down for two sessions helps.

Then, and only then, begins the battle with time, which can also be extremely subjective. How you perceive time can make it seem stress-inducingly quick or painfully slow. It perhaps seems so only to those on the outside, but time can move extremely slowly during such situations.

India's dressing room has two men who have achieved these feats at different levels. Their head coach Gautam Gambhir once batted 643 minutes for just 137 runs while following-on to help India save a Test in Napier in 2008-09. Not long before that, the batting coach Sitanshu Kotak resisted Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium for 796 minutes for a draw. Kotak's bringing of Mumbai down to their knees is part of Ranji Trophy folklore.

The experience is out there, they can perhaps tell the formula to those going out: four overs equal 15 minutes, eight overs is half-an-hour, double that and you get a drinks break. One more drinks break, and there is a session break. You need these landmarks on the way.

It still can't help time move faster. The biggest challenge when attempting such draws is to not get ahead of yourself. You can't think, "yeah, this looks easy now" and start thinking of the next challenge: Ben Stokes, or the second new ball, or overcast skies. You can get away with doing that in a chase. You can perhaps take risks when you are confident and make sure that even if you get out, you leave the rest a manageable task.

There is no such concept here. It has to be done one ball at a time. There is no get-out-of-jail-free card, except to wait for the sentence to get over. You have to find the sweet spot between concentrating and relaxing. Too focused, and you can exhaust yourself. Too relaxed, and you can make a mistake. And if you get out, your team is no closer to finishing the task than the objective passage of time.

KL Rahul and Shubman Gill have the techniques and the temperament. Gill is naturally an even-tempered person. Rahul has seen enough ups and downs in cricket to know better than to get swayed by outcomes. They have both had one infamous meltdown on a Test field each. Rahul in South Africa, Gill at Lord's.

However, with bat in hand, a natural extension of their bodies, they have the kind of game that can take care of them as they go about batting time. They have seen through a hat-trick ball, the tricky three overs before lunch, the new ball, then a drinks break, then sets of 15 minutes to tea, then repeated it to stumps.

They have had other landmarks. Perhaps a Jofra Archer spell. Then making him bowl bouncers. Then switch off and switch on as he went around the wicket. Same with the other end. Liam Dawson switching to over the wicket. Kick them away. One ball at a time. Move around, get one to kick and beat the outside edge, but play the next ball for the angle because not many will turn. As Gill did in the 62nd over, having faced 162 balls by then.

Rahul, who faced his first ball after Gill had already played one, went into stumps having negotiated 210, which was 33 more than Gill. At one point, he was so engrossed in just defending the ball and switching off that he forgot to run. Gill had to shout at him.

Runs were immaterial and were scored only when the ball was really bad or when played instinctively. Or, at times, just to buy time, that wonderful concept. When you keep defending, defending, defending, even though time is moving too slowly, you are concentrating so hard you can feel hurried. So you hit a four, move your legs, knock gloves with the non-striker, switch off, and switch on again.

The job is only 40% done. Day five will move at its objective pace again. It will feel too slow and too quick at times. There will be landmarks. Get yourself in, then new ball in 17 overs, then proper switch on, personal milestones perhaps. If you get close to erasing the deficit, you can sense time move faster because every run you score will also take time for England to score it back. For England, it will start rushing out of their hands if India get close to saving the match.

Such Test innings are perhaps appreciated more by eccentrics, but there is every bit of the competitiveness that makes sport a spectacle. On a beautiful Saturday evening, as the shadows at Old Trafford lengthen, time is moving smoothly. It will find its own rhythms on Sunday morning: slowly for some, quickly for some others. It will, in actual fact, move only one second at a time.