The win by England over India, concluded yesterday, was extraordinary.  Now, of course, in retrospect, it was inevitable.  India are exhausted by having won the World Cup, by having played in the IPL, by having played in the West Indies, by their lack of experience in English conditions.  The ICC crocked them.  Etc., etc., etc..  But they didn’t look exhausted on the first day, when England were 124 for 8, did they?  Or when they were themselves 267 for 4, already well ahead, on day two.

One of many remarkable facts about this game was that England won by a landslide without anything significant being contributed by any of: Cook (2 and 5), Trott (4 and 2), or Swann (12-0-76-0 and 3-0-21-0), other than Swann’s useful bit of batting in the first innings, when he helped Broad to get England past two hundred, and when he made more than twice as many runs (28) as Cook and Trott combined in the entire match (13).  Which is another way of saying that this really is a team.  Cook, Trott and Swann have recently done stellar things for England and are fixtures, provided only that they are fit.  But this time, others did the stellar things, like Broad and Bell and Bresnan.  This really is a team.  Everyone is justifying his place and making his presence felt, and the problem now is not who to pick, but who to leave out.

When India began their final innings, the first wicket they lost was that of Dravid.  So when V.V.S. Laxman was then bowled by Anderson to make it 13-2, India’s resistance ended.  Once any two of Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar were gone, the rest of the Indian batting was exposed, India were toast, everyone immediately knew it, including them, and including Laxman.  Catches involve a moment between: it’s a catch, and: he’s caught it and he’s out.  Sometimes quite a long moment, when it’s hit up in the air, or when there’s an appeal and a pause while the umpire decides, which also applies to LBWs of course.  Now decision reviews can prolong that same gap to something lasting several minutes, or so it seems.  But when a class batsman like Laxman has one of his stumps sent spinning like that, while offering only a routine defensive shot with no big wind-up or back lift or dance down the pitch, there is no gap at all of this sort.  The game moves from one state to another radically different state, instantaneously.  Rarely does a test match go from being still some kind of contest to absolutely no contest, with such brutal suddenness.

Another vivid memory of this match was, for me, the incoming emails to cricinfo when Pietersen dropped a very catchable chance from Yuvraj when Yuvraj was on four, on day two, and when Yuvraj then went on to make over fifty and share in the century partnership with Dravid that took India into that seemingly commanding position towards the end of day two.  Pietersen, said one emailer, has just dropped England’s chance of becoming the Number One test match team!  The longer the stand when on, the more all the commentators went on about that dropped catch.  How costly could that be?  Was that a series defining moment?  Most have already forgotten about that, but I remember it still, and now I remember it here.

England have dropped quite a lot of catches in this series, the one serious criticism that one can make of them.  They might have had Indian opener Mukund out first ball for the second time in the match, making it 0-1 off the first ball of the innings for the second time in the match, but that second one was one of the many chances that they dropped.

At Lord’s on the last day, as England chiselled away at the Indian batting, the commentators were losing count of the number of catches dropped by England.  Literally.  I remember one of them saying England have now dropped two, and I could personally already recall three.

My guess is that average teams are cast down by dropped catches, because they know that if they don’t hold their catches, they will probably lose.  But above average teams positively feed off dropped catches, almost in the same way that they feed off undropped catches, or wickets of any other kind.  Average teams regard dropped catches as evidence of their terrible averageness.  Above average teams regard dropped catches as evidence that chances are being created and that success will soon follow.  They drop a catch and promptly start bowling and fielding even better.

On that glorious first day at Melbourne a few months ago, England began with, I think, two dropped catches, before one finally stuck, and that extraordinary demolition of the Australian first innings finally got underway.  Yes, scroll down here, and you see it.  0.5: Watson dropped, by Collingwood.  2.1: Watson dropped, by Pietersen.  Only when we get to 3.2 do we read: SR Watson c Pietersen b Tremlett 5.  What England were thinking, I think, was not: Oh no, there goes our chance of keeping him down to a small score.  It was: We’ve got this guy on the run.  Any ball now, one of these chances is going to stick.  What an excellent team they are.

This series is not over yet.  India have only to win one of the last two games and not lose the other and they stay top of the test match ratings, and they could still do that.  When this last game was getting started with a clatter of early England wickets, I was dusting off my thoughts about how England have recent previous in going one up in a series and then losing a game to make it one all.  They did this in the last two Ashes series, before winning them, and it seemed to be happening again.  Now, I remind any readers of this who are now taking it for granted that England will crush India in the final two games, that India with a full hand of bowlers, that much better acclimatised and surely wanting very much not to be whitewashed, could still make a lot of grief for England.

Next summer, when the South Africans drop by, should be equally fascinating.