"Finisher" may be the vogue term in one-day cricket these days, but while many people think one-day matches are won by manoeuvring ones or twos rather than by blasting boundaries, India showed at Kanpur that there is more than one way to skin a bowling attack. As our graph shows, they belted exactly two-thirds of their runs in boundaries, a ratio which was more than double England's (32%) and a marked improvement on India's performance in the first three matches of this series (45%).

The game was decided in the first 11 overs when, with Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag keen to make hay while the ball was hard and new, that figure was a staggering 74%, with 27% of deliveries bowled by England going to the boundary. In other words, they were chasing leather - or, rather, retrieving it - one in every four balls.

England themselves had a flying start - exactly 50% of their runs in the first 11 overs came from boundaries - but between overs 12 and 39 the rate dropped to 23%. It doesn't take a genius to see where this game was won and lost.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

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