Broad's fingers cut the mustard

In the morning, Stuart Broad put on an exhibition of top-quality seam bowling. These days when we talk about the art of fast bowling, the focus is always on the wrist and rarely on the fingers. Broad has shown that even if cutters are no longer in vogue, they're equally effective as swing, if not more. From a batsman's perspective playing swing is relatively easy because he can see the movement in the air and also, if the lateral movement off the pitch is complimenting the swing in the air, he can adjust. In Vizag, Broad brought the ball back into the batsman in the air and whenever he wanted to make it go away after pitching, he pressed the index finger a little more. It's next to impossible for a batsman to gauge that little change from the hand and the only clue is the slightly wobbly seam position in the air.

England's seamers kept everything outside off in the first innings. The idea, once again, was to target the chink they successfully exploited in 2014 in England. But the pitch at Vizag is different and the Virat Kohli they were bowling to this time is different. Kohli was content in leaving a lot of balls alone in the first innings. So, in the second innings, the English bowlers tried bowling a lot straighter. But even in the second innings, Kohli was up to it. For every plan that England had for Kohli, Kohli had a counter plan.

In the first Test match, India's seamers didn't attempt too many bouncers to young Haseeb Hameed. But in today's age of in-depth video analysis, it was only a matter of time that before India changed tack. The first ball that Hameed faced from Mohammed Shami was a bouncer that hit him on the gloves. Umesh Yadav, from the other end, also tried a couple of bouncers early on. So far, Hameed has handled the bouncer threat well.

Taking wickets in a Test match is often a result of a nice set-up. The ball that gets you the wicket isn't always the best ball. In fact, very often the preceding few balls lead you to commit the fatal mistake, and that's why it is important to follow up a good ball with an equally good ball. The first bouncer to Hameed, which hit him on the gloves, was followed by a ball that drifted down leg straight to the keeper. The same thing happened in the next over from Umesh. The ball that hit Hameed in the unmentionables was followed by another ball down leg.

Another noticeable change from how India's seamers operated in Rajkot was the way they hid the shine in Vizag. Both Shami and Umesh have started carrying the ball in the non-bowling hand in the run-up and it had two benefits - the obvious one is that hiding the shine betrays the swing later and also, transferring the ball from non-bowling hand to the bowling hand while loading helps you to hold the action together better. At times the non-bowling arm doesn't work as much as it should but the moment you start transferring the ball while loading, you're forced to make the non-bowling arm work appropriately.