Ashish Wednesday

Perhaps Nehra took heart from the brilliant speed and swing of Srinath and Zaheer, who kept beating the English batsmen — 13 times between the 6th and 10th overs. But they could only pick up one wicket between them when Nehra walked in for his spell.

Zaheer and Srinath may have swung the ball a bit too much, so that it missed the all-important edge. Nehra was a shade slower than the two and found the conditions perfect, pitching the ball bang on the blind spot and then moving it away. That was his stock ball — for the batsmen, the shock ball. What made the delivery deadly was the speed: at 140 kmph, it gave the batsman little time to pull away from the shot he’d been induced into.

He had to wait till the second for his first wicket, the prize scalp of English skipper Nasser Hussain: an away-swinger that took the edge and went behind to Dravid. Four more wickets were taken in this manner but the best was the one that felled Paul Collingwood. The all-rounder was squared up by a delivery that moved in the air towards leg and middle and then took off towards the off, kissed the bat and sped towards the strategically placed lone slip. The one incoming ball which fetched Nehra a wicket was to Alec Stewart; the England ’keeper had no time to move as it hit him on the pads in middle and leg.

Nehra’s a bowler who’s suffered more than his share of injuries since a promising debut against Zimbabwe two years ago. It was against Zimbabwe, ironically, that he surprised everybody by clocking over 140kphs. That prompted Ganguly to give him the new ball against Namibia. But after bowling just one delivery he injured his ankle and had to leave the field. He spent the next three days in limbo and almost didn’t make it today. Then he heard destiny calling.