Where Ashley Giles chose the coward's option – bowling repeatedly outside leg stump - Ray Price took India's batting maestro on, eyeball to eyeball, and came up trumps. There was nothing negative about Price's bowling today. If anything, it was Sachin Tendulkar who forgot that run scoring was an option after tea on the second day. He dawdled along to 36 from 119 deliveries before being trapped plumb in front by Price with a delivery that shot through at shin height. Price bowled 56 balls to Tendulkar, restricting him to a mere eight runs. What's more, he did it the orthodox way, without resorting to the Giles method. Of the balls he bowled, 49 pitched on or outside middle stump and 48 were on a good length. He threw down the gauntlet to one of the world's best players of slow bowling, and emerged unscathed.

If Tendulkar's batting was bizarre, Sourav Ganguly's was entirely out of character. By close, the Indian captain had made 78 not out. Astonishingly, 50 of those runs came on the onside, a mere 28 on the off – this from a man once referred to as the God of the off side.

Zimbabwe's bowlers made it easy for him though, 33 runs being made off good length deliveries and 28 off those pitched short. On a pitch that was as slow as rush-hour traffic, Brighton Watambwa and Travis Friend were punished when they attempted to bounce him out. Ganguly played the pull and the push off the hips with elan, accumulating 17 runs through midwicket and 16 through square leg.

Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Wisden.com India.

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