There are two ways of looking at England's performance at The Oval. On one hand you could say that a depleted team has done well to hold India. More worrying has been the lack of ambition once Plan A - bat for ages and pile up about 650 - didn't quite work. England kept up their attritional tactics at The Oval today. In as much as they gradually worked their way through the Indian order, you could say they succeeded - but they have won few friends along the course of the last two days. At least some bravura batting towards the end of the day lifted the spirits a little, and banished those pesky thoughts of a nasty collapse.

There have been signs of English exhaustion in this Test, which is perhaps not surprising after such a jam-packed summer. Nasser Hussain in particular has looked shot - a far cry from the calculating chess grandmaster of the first two Tests. Again, it's not surprising: non-stop international cricket, interspersed with regular phone calls telling you yet another player has gone in the fetlock, has that effect.

Only one England bowler - Matthew Hoggard - has managed to play in all seven Tests of the summer, which means a lot of recalculation and redrawing of plans for Hussain, Duncan Fletcher and Malcolm Ashton, the man in charge of the team laptop. It mightn't have been the worst idea for Hussain to have had a holiday and miss the upcoming Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka, but apparently he turned down the idea of a spot of R and R. Maybe Fletcher should have persisted, or even insisted.

Rahul Dravid was immaculate, and for once it isn't a cliché to say that a run-out was the only way he was going to get out. Apart from a scorching chance to Ashley Giles's wrong hand in the gully, it's hard to recall a false stroke, in 468 balls of calm defiance. Sachin Tendulkar might grab the headlines for India, but Dravid is coming up on the rails. The gap between their averages - 57.96 for Tendulkar and 54.43 for Dravid - is closing too.

Steven Lynch is database director of Wisden.com.

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