For the first time in his Test career Marcus Trescothick made three consecutive fifties, and his beefy 81 at Old Trafford owed much to his ability to punish the bad ball.

As our graph shows, Trescothick was respectful to good-length deliveries - scoring at exactly one run an over - but when Sri Lanka overpitched or dropped short he was lethal, and plundered 67 runs off 68 balls - virtually six an over.

Those figures were even more pronounced against Muttiah Muralitharan. When Murali landed it on a good length, Trescothick scored a reverential 4 runs off 43 balls (0.56 per over), but when he erred in length that figure shot up to 8.47 an over (24 runs off 17 balls). Trescothick also scored 73% of his runs on the off side.

Eventually Trescothick fell to Murali for the first time in Tests, but it had to happen someday. He'd been defying gravity for long enough, and his record against Murali - 116 runs off 350 balls for once out - is still one that any batsman in the world would be proud of.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

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