Trent Bridge

Zaheer hasn't fully recovered for the start of the second test match, and the excitable Sreesanth - resplendent with his pink hair, by Tony and Guy - is given the new ball with Praveen Kumar. Otherwise both teams are unchanged

According to the children's rhyme, Friday's child is loving and giving, and that could be a fair description of Sreesanth's bowling. Trent Bridge has a reputation for supporting swing bowling, and seeking to maximise that advantage Messrs Kumar and Sreesanth bowl very full to the England batsmen, who tuck in with a series of drives and clips off the pads. Within 10 overs, England have 50 runs on the board. Ishant Sharma is summoned, and he promptly gets Andrew Strauss to edge behind. Nevertheless, Jonathan Trott bats steadily until lunch; and then until tea; and then until the close. It's 350-5 (Trott 135*) at close of play. The ball does not swing all day.

Criclet has a funny way of playing tricks on cricketers, and on the second day it is all change - the ball swings. Although Praveen Kumar is pulled out of the attack by Billy Bowden for running down the pitch in his follow through, Sharma and Sreesanth run through the England lower order, so that they are bowled out for 415. Sitting in the TMS commentary box, Henry Blofeld remarks that the match is delictately poised on a placid batting pitch.

It remains so, as over the next couple of days, as India and England respectively score 359 (Mukund 133, Broad 5-75) and 249 (Broad 75, Harbhajan 6-28) respectively, in a pair of unremarkable innings. India have got to score 306 to win.

But perhaps that balance was always destined to skew, when the shiny cricket ball was given to James Anderson. In his very first over, he traps Abhinav Mukund leg before wicket. Rahul Dravid is able to see out the over, but in Anderson's next over, Gautam Ghambir is dismissed in the same manner, such that Sachin Tendulkar is brought to the crease to rapturous applause. He gets off the mark with a boundary off his first ball through the covers; a prologue for the splendid innings which is to follow. However, the Indian innings is what Bob Willis calls a staccato affair, as one by one the sub-contitenters fall to the hair-gelled duo of Anderson and Stuart Broad.

All except Sachin Tendulkar - he quickly reaches fifty, and powers through the sixties and seventies. That hundredth hundred looks inevitable; but then something happens. A lapse in concentration? Perhaps. Graeme Swann is bowling round the stumps, and lands one on the line of middle stump. The ball turns and bounces, striking the little master on the flap of his front pad, still in front of middle; the England fielders appeal with a raucous alacrity, turning to Umpire Bowden for a response. He ponders a moment; no trouble about the line, but what about height? The ball the flap of Tendulkar's pad, but then, Billy thinks, Tendulkar is short. With that slightly embaressed look, he raises his crooked finger to send Tendulkar on his way. The Indian team, the Indian supporters and perhaps all of the Indian viewers are horrified to note Hawkeye's projection that the ball would have bounced over the stump. The decision would clearly have been reversed, had the full DRS been in operation. Bowden's unfortunate mis-decision marks the beginning of the end for the Indian effort, and the innings subsides to 188 all out.

Within an hour, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh issues the following statement to the waiting press:

"I believe in England they have a saying for this situation: we have been hoist by our own petard. We have lost this cricket match because the full DRS was not in operation, at our request. Sachin Tendulkar, the jewel of Indian batting, has been robbed of his rightful crown.

We were duped by the duplicitous schemes of the ECB, who persuaded us to argue that Hawkeye technology should not be part of the DRS decision making process. We have immediately petitioned the ICC to make the full use of Hawkeye compulsory for the remainder of the series. In the meantime, we have suspended coach Duncan Fletcher for failing to point out to us this clear and present danger to Indian cricket."