When Sachin Tendulkar rediscovers that sort of form there can be only one outcome. And when Ganguly partners him for yet another century partnership things become even simpler.
Given India's illness worries, modest batting form, and the fact that they were playing only five pure batsmen, 227 seemed just marginally out of reach. India's opening pressure index (PI) was therefore 102.
At 88/0 after 20, the PI was just 70; and at 112/0 at the half-way mark it was just 66.
Somehow India contrived to fall into a hole, and at 142/4 the match was evenly poised (PI 96).
Yuvraj Singh and the admirable Dinesh Karthik kept India afloat, but even this duo was briefly shackled by Nel and Ntini. The PI briefly climbed over 100 as the balls remaining started depleting, but it only needed one six from Yuvraj for India to regain control and level the series.
If the pressure curve is stretched out, the length of the stretched curve is a good indicator of how close the match was. With a score of 737, this too was a "very close" match.
Srinivas Bhogle, Sunil Patil and T M Sunil Kumar work for Cranes Software International Limited, Bangalore
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