CRICKET:Zaheer Khan bowled India to the verge of victory with five stunning wickets as he snaked the ball mesmerically from around the wicket, first one way and then the other in the spirit of the great Wasim Akram.Used sparingly in the morning session by Rahul Dravid he returned with zest in the afternoon to add four more wickets to that of Alastair Cook taken first thing. Among Zaheer's victims was Michael Vaughan, who batted peerlessly for 124, before the tamest of ends.
With England bowled out for 355, a lead of 72, India were in reality left at most 40 minutes' batting to get the runs last night. With the weather set fair, though, discretion rather than bravado won the day. The sides will resume this morning with the tourists, all their wickets intact, needing a further 63 to go one up in the three-match series.
Dravid's side struck without mercy once the second new ball became available, by which time Vaughan and Paul Collingwood had all but taken their fourth-wicket stand beyond the century mark. On the slenderest of threads do fortunes hang. With Zaheer in his second over with the new ball and delivering from around the wicket, Vaughan had every right to envisage runs as the ball angled down the leg side.
Instead it lodged momentarily in the gap between his leg and left thigh pad, deflected, dropped in the crease and rolled gently into the stumps before the horror-struck batsman could react. Thus was set in motion a chain of dismissals that saw the last seven wickets fall for 68 runs, 22 of them in a last-wicket partnership.
Vaughan's dismissal was followed swiftly in the same over by that of Ian Bell, caught on the crease second ball and leg before wicket. Dravid allowed Zaheer only four overs before turning to RP Singh, who promptly ripped a wicked inswinger through the groping defence of Matthew Prior and plucked from the turf his off stump.
By now England's objective would have switched to an attempt to get sufficient runs on the board to give a lead of, say, 150 and the opportunity to inflict some early embarrassment and later jitters, especially if the same extravagant movement found by the Indian pace bowlers persisted into day five.
Low targets have often proved more troublesome than larger ones. This, though, rested on Collingwood's capacity to nurse the tail as tenderly as he had managed in Nagpur on the occasion of his maiden Test hundred, and briefly he sparked into belligerent life.
Dravid countered immediately, however, playing his trump card: Zaheer returned to the fray and managed to float one away from the right-hander, who, drawn into the stroke, edged low to first slip. Kumble collected the tail-end sweepings - Chris Tremlett belted aimlessly to mid-on, Panesar, who was deluded by a force to the extra-cover boundary, slogged high to mid on, and Anderson simply went on to the back foot and missed.
Since his return, Vaughan has batted in princely fashion and yesterday he was exemplary - on the drive, with none more thrilling than the one he hit straight back past Singh to take him to within two of his 17th Test hundred, and through midwicket, where he picked off Kumble with ease.
With Andrew Strauss, he added 81 for the second wicket, the opener batting sweetly for his 55 before he blotted his book with an ugly flat-footed flay immediately after lunch. Vaughan's subsequent brief alliance with Kevin Pietersen produced little but controversy as Sreesanth let fly a wicked swinging beamer that Pietersen did well to avoid. Sreesanth's apology cut little ice.
Guardian Service
