Today was almost like the start of a fresh match. The new ball was taken first thing in the morning and at the crease were men who often get in before the first droplets of sweat have appeared on the fielding side. If viewed in isolation, it belonged – marginally - to West Indies. They took seven wickets for 179 runs on a nothing surface, and in response lost their openers for 33. But they could not remove Rahul Dravid, and they could not erase the 278 runs they conceded yesterday. Dravid's inability to make a mistake has reached absurd proportions. Sometimes, when you are batting like a God, and all life feels like a dream, there must come the briefest of moments where focus leaves you and the hard work is all undone. Not for Dravid. Sure as the sun he comes, but then he doesn't ever seem to go.

In his last four Test innings he has batted more than 28 hours, faced over 1200 balls and scored 580 runs – none of them badly made. Relentlessly he has delved deep into technique which, having been scrupulously applied for years, has become as natural to him as walking. His mental stamina has been extraordinary: never indulging, always processing thought into deed. Somewhere along the line, the physical stamina had to give. And so it happened in the liquid heat of Mumbai, when he pulled up with cramp as he completed his hundredth run of the innings.

This was a Test century of very high calibre, though it must occupy fourth place of the four he has scored on the trot. It was slow - but it pretty much followed the brief. India's gameplan, quite blatantly, was to try and bat once in the match. Ideally, this would have meant winning the toss, which they did, and compiling a total upwards of 550. The plan was jolted when Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly fell within five overs of one another in the morning.

It was head-down time. Besides the sheer weight of runs, another advantage loomed. The more wear the pitch saw, the more beneficial it would be for the Indian spinners. Dravid and VVS Laxman were required to get themselves in and keep playing till the bowlers semi-dissolved, at which point the boundaries would flow and the issue would be pressed home. That point never arrived.

Twenty runs came in the hour after lunch. The batsmen were sometimes pushed to a situation where any run may have entailed risk: Mahendra Nagamootoo fired it into the pads from round the wicket with six on the leg; the seamers often bowled to a 7-2 offside field with no slips, but five in the arc between backward point and mid-off.

Neither team felt it in their best interests to attack, and so the game drifted snoozily onwards. The inertia could have continued forever. Thankfully, there was action. The Test needed a desperate collapse and a few tail-end slogs. Sometimes clumsiness can be the most entertaining of virtues.

Rahul Bhattacharya is assistant editor of Wisden.com in India.

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