Rahul Dravid's 59-ball 66 was a perfect example of how one should bat in the middle and final overs of a one-dayer. So often accused of getting bogged down and slowing the momentum of the innings, Dravid paced his knock to perfection today. He rotated the strike excellently and ensured that the loss of some quick wickets at the death didn't result in a slump in the scoring-rate.

Dravid came in to bat in the 30th over, with the score reading 188 for 2, and immediately got busy, looking for the ones and twos. After 10 balls, he had a strike-rate of 80%, which went up to 104% after 25 balls. It continued to hover around the run-a-ball mark thereafter.

Only 16 of the 59 deliveries he faced were dot balls – just 27%. For the entire Indian innings, the corresponding figure was 45.6%. Dravid eased away 32 singles, for an impressive singles to dot-balls ratio of 2. Next best in the Indian line-up was VVS Laxman with 1.06.

Dravid scored 35 from 30 balls on the front foot, and 23 from 20 balls when playing back. His only failure was when he attempted to emulate Doug Marillier with the scoop behind the keeper – he tried it twice, and it fetched him only one run.

At Faridabad, India and Zimbabwe had exactly the same number of boundaries – 27 fours and three sixes. But Zimbabwe ran 13 twos and three threes, while India managed only eight twos. Here, India were much sharper. They ran 114 singles to 95 by Zimbabwe, 17 twos to Zimbabwe's 18, while both teams managed one three. Importantly, Zimbabwe played a higher percentage of dot balls than India did – 47.5% to 45.7%.

S Rajesh is sub editor of Wisden.com India.

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