After his brilliant 121 today, it seems absurd that doubts were raised over Marcus Trescothick's ability to play spin before England toured Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2000-01. But they were. Now he's scored four international hundreds, and all against sides from the subcontinent. There are no such doubts anymore. Trescothick treated Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Sachin Tendulkar with a brutal, beefy contempt. Whereas he scored 47 runs off 56 balls when facing the seamers (5.03 per over), he smacked 74 from 53 off the spinners. In his pre-series briefing, Bob Woolmer said England needed to take at least six runs an over off the spinners. Trescothick managed that and more, walloping them for 8.38 per over.

Most of his runs came through a variety of sweep shots. The slog-sweep is a favoured Trescothick shot, and though it has got him in trouble before - often in freak circumstances - he used it successfully here in conjunction with the pull-sweep and the paddle-sweep. Trescothick scored 19 runs square on the leg side off the spinners, and a further 19 behind square on the leg side.

In fact Trescothick scored 55 of his 70 leg-side runs off the spinners (79%); on the off side he scored only 19 of 51 of them (37%). After Mike Gatting gave sweeping a bad name in England's last one-dayer here - the 1987 World Cup final - Trescothick showed how profitable a shot it can be.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

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