The national obsession and the hometown-boy-done-good gave Indian fans a few moments of levity, but by and large the second day was a grim affair with England once again in the ascendancy. Sachin Tendulkar's batting infused life into an afternoon every bit as dull as the Bangalore weather. This, after Anil Kumble had finally picked up the England jack - Matthew Hoggard - to join the ranks of Test cricket's bowling immortals. Kumble's moment - cheered to the rafters by an adoring crowd - came two hours too late for India. Javagal Srinath had bowled a magnificent spell in the morning, getting rid of the dangerous Craig White. With the scoreboard showing 271 for 7, India should have wrapped things up. Ganguly, though, had very different ideas. It was clear to most people that Srinath and Sarandeep Singh constituted India's best hope of taking wickets. But Sarandeep had to wait till 15 minutes before lunch to get a look-in. And it wasn't till after the interval that he and Srinath actually bowled in tandem. Kumble bowled eight overs more than Sarandeep, without looking anywhere near as penetrative. One of those mornings, then, when emotion clearly over-ruled commonsense.

India's batting was once again a case of the little big man standing tall among the ruins. What caught the eye most was his patient approach and refusal to be frustrated. The initial phase of his innings saw some ugly attempts to hoick the ball over the leg side as Giles kept pitching it in the rough. But later the negative line was just ignored. "If you can't be bothered to play the game, neither can I," seemed to be the message. Flintoff's repeated efforts to bounce him out were treated just as dismissively.

On the rare occasions the English bowlers actually pitched the ball on the stumps, the response was regal. Hoggard was once again worked from outside off stump to the midwicket fence, and a back-foot cover-drive off Flintoff fairly raced to the ropes. The shot of the day however was a cover-drive off White. It thudded into the boundary boards before Nasser Hussain at mid-off had time to move a muscle. Even though England adopted such overwhelmingly negative tactics to neutralise him, he reached his fifty in 98 deliveries. He spent half an hour marooned in the mid-forties but the roar that greeted the push to the cover boundary that brought up his half-century was evocative indeed. Tendulkar's innings has been a work of genius but it's a masterpiece that needs several more coats of paint for completion.

Andy Flintoff put every ounce of his over-sized body into his bowling, and combined with Srinath's lion-hearted display for India, made you wonder about the wisdom of India leaving out Tinu Yohannan. Having let England wriggle out of the net, as they did in Ahmedabad, India once more look to Tendulkar to lead them into the light. Thank heavens we never have to face such pressure.

Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

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