When is enough, enough?

"One appeal is enough", Darryl Harper, who evidently has had a fill of Indian appeals, warned the Indian fielders at one point.

Appeals, today, have held more interest than usual. In an earlier edition of these comments, I'd recounted that incident relating to Stephen Fleming. On reading that, a friend wrote in suggesting that a second appeal would have been in order.

But a second appeal, after the first has been turned down, brings the wrath of the umpires down on your head -- so where do you go?

Fleming -- who has thus far led a charmed life -- was the party in yet another incident that threw the focus on appeals. This time, Yohannan bowled a rather ordinary delivery, short and going down leg. Fleming wafted at it, there was an audible sound (subsequent replays suggested the sound was ball brushing glove), and Parthiv Patel held.

Parthiv then appealed -- loud, and long. Perhaps his appeal had a more fervent edge because that was how he himself had been dismissed -- wafting at a ball going down leg and getting a glove through to his opposite number. Amusingly, the Indian players in the slips seemed a touch embarassed by the prolonged appeal, and gestured to the lad to give it a rest.

The thing, though, is that Parthiv was right -- Fleming had in fact gloved the ball as it went past.

Zaheer finally ended the Kiwi skipper's 'nine lives' act in the first over after lunch with a delivery angling to leg, that Fleming tried to work through midwicket. The barest hint of movement meant the leading edge on the shot, and an easy caught and bowled (60/5).

With the Kiwis needing 39 more to equal the Indian total, with five wickets in hand, they seem still to have the barest of edges -- but as a Nehra spell before lunch showed, the game could turn any moment. The usual suspects have to be Zaheer, and Nehra if he can recapture the rapture of his second spell of the morning -- but keep an eye on Harbhajan, if he gets to bowl.

The one over that he did get, just before lunch, had bounce, turn, and drift -- this may be a seamer's track, but on the evidence, a good spinner could just be the joker India needs in its hand.