The Wall opens the window to a win

Rahul Dravid maintained vigil for 392 minutes today, as his shadow first contracted and then lengthened. He scrapped and sometimes he missed, he cut and he drove through the covers, he made sure that India could retire for the day assured that tomorrow they have a chance at posting a mammoth total to present Pakistan with the spectre of an innings defeat.

In India’s second day scorecard of 342 for four, his 134 gives a disproportionate measure of his contribution. India stand 118 runs ahead of Pakistan’s first innings total of 224, with one of their two prospective openers at the crease, and the other still to bat. Sourav Ganguly is unbeaten on a professionally amassed 53 and when the hero of Lahore, Yuvraj Singh, does find his way to the middle, he will stand atop a promising foundation.

The challenge today was occupation and accumulation. Among Dravid’s most memorable knocks — Kolkata, Georgetown, Headingley, Adelaide — Rawalpindi would perhaps rank low in terms of fluency of shots. But in the import of the innings — in taking his team towards possible victory and in easing the task before his mates — it’s right up there. He himself withheld judgement on his unfolding innings, saying its significance would lie in whether it takes India to victory or not.

It has already given them more than a glimmer of hope. Wednesday has taken drastic toll of Pakistan. Inzamam-ul Haq gave his pacers short spells, but the conditions were sapping nonetheless. Shoaib produced flashes of brilliance. His first delivery to Sachin Tendulkar invited the bat in a death wish on the way to the keeper.

Later he quarried assistance from the air and did a well-set Laxman in with a deceptive full toss. Before dusk, however, he had to be shepherded off the field, for a medical examination of a swollen thumb. Mohammad Sami, almost out of the match, toiled long and hard. As did Fazle Akbar. As Dravid would say later, if the conditions were taxing for the batsmen, they could at least take solace in the fact that they would exhaust the bowlers more.

After Parthiv’s grit, Laxman enthralled with his wristy class. Sport medicine may one day advance beyond investigations into Muralitharan’s action; it may point us to a switch in the Hyderabad batsman’s mind that he has no power to turn on or off. He plays late, but in his flicks and pulls there is either a rhythm or there is not. He appears to be a man captive to the beating of a distant drummer, summoning an instinctive catalogue for the right shots.

Laxman is either in the zone or he is not. He himself is a man inquiring into the process, determining from the manner in which he wields his bat his proximity to the zone. Today he was there. He capitulated to one momentary trance.

Dravid, on the other hand, survived a volley of scares. A Danish Kaneria delivery ricocheted off his bat in the direction of his foot and thence flew off to the wicketkeeper. The third umpire was called to ascertain whether it had been grassed en route from the bat to Kamran Akmal. The benefit of the doubt went to the vice-captain, and it was some overs later that he succumbed to a little hobble.

India’s plan, says Dravid, is to bat just once and have the fourth and fifth days to bowl at Pakistan. By them there may be some cracks in the track which Anil Kumble could exploit. In any case, it has been a pattern in this Test series that teams take turn to recoil at the magnitude of their run chase. In the end it may be Pakistan’s fate to rue the turn of the dice that marked them out as first victims in this three-match series.