This was the best day of cricket in the series. The Kotla pitch crumbled, 17 wickets tumbled, and the Test match hung in the balance. On the face of it, 86 runs with seven wickets in hand doesn't look too hard. But it takes on different proportions when Raymond Price turns it more than 45 degrees and gets it to rear onto your chest. It becomes still tougher when one of your frontline batsmen, Virender Sehwag, may not be in a position to bat after injuring his shoulder. And it becomes positively sinister when you know that your team has lost four, and almost lost the fifth, of their five Tests when Asoka de Silva has been umpiring.

And yet, when Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble took ten wickets between them this afternoon, everything looked right for India. They had a slice of luck when Rahul Dravid's catch of Trevor Gripper, taken on what appeared to be the half-volley, was not referred to the third umpire. It meant that Harbhajan Singh's first wicket arrived in his second over. He'd been switched on dangerously early. The sun was shining, the pitch was breaking, and Harbhajan was going to be irresistible.

He bounded in beautifully with four, sometimes five men around the bat, many more fired-up northerners in the stands, and Anil Kumble steadily hissing at the other end. He was spot-on in going round the wicket and into the rough when bowling to the left-handers Alistair Campbell and Andy Flower. Both fell in the same over – the bite off the pitch startled Campbell, and Flower was flummoxed by one that slid into him. These were good wickets, but nothing compared to what was to come.

For the first time in his four-year-old Test career, Harbhajan managed a caught-and-bowled. And what a caught-and-bowled it was. Stuart Carlisle was lulled into driving a dipping offbreak through the off side, and he did manage to get it towards mid-off. It was intercepted by a flying Turbanator. With two smooth motions, Harbhajan had combined the subtlety of a finger-spinner with the athleticism of a 21st-century citizen.

But he even bettered that one – the ball that bowled Travis Friend through the gate was a peach. Erapalli Prasanna, who loves slagging off Harbhajan for not being classical enough and not being able to bowl batsmen out like any self-respecting deceiver should, must have twitched uneasily. Eventually, Harbhajan even took the catch that wrapped up the Zimbabwean innings and pocketed the ball as a souvenir. He deserved it.

The Play Of The Day, however, came from little Tatenda Taibu - a sparky, bubbling grasshopper of a wicketkeeper. India were barely out of the blocks in their chase when he leapt in the air, grabbed the ball and dunked it into the stumps to run out Deep Dasgpta. Anthony "Spud" Webb, at 5ft 7ins the shortest-ever winner of American basketball's slam-dunk competition, would have been proud. Dasgupta, who had taken his dropped-catch tally for the two-match series to five today, was just embarrassed.

The Non-Play Of the Day came from Sourav Ganguly, who has otherwise played a sterling role in this Test. At 1.20pm today, he asked Zaheer Khan to bowl an over of loopy left-arm spin. Of course, it didn't work. It must be something in the Delhi air at this time of the year. On March 3, 1996, in the midst of a fearful hiding at the hands of Sanath Jayasuriya in a World Cup match, Manoj Prabhakar turned his arm over for some offbreaks. Those two overs disappeared almost as quickly as his inswingers, and India lost that match. It keeps getting spookier.

Rahul Bhattacharya is staff writer for Wisden.com in India.

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