the trumpets may have been going wild while Sehwag was swinging his way to 150+ and later when Kaif, half dead on his feet, and Patel put India almost beyond reach, but it was watching the epic partnership between Martyn and nightwatchman turned dayguard Dizzy Gillespie that had me weeping. These guys watched every ball with the deep concentration the pitch and the tricksy bowlers demanded. Their patience and resilience was heart rending. Marto waited on every ball and played with fast and malleable hands at the last moment. Dizzy played with whatever he could muster – he must have been wearing that headband under his helmet, he mustve been. Time passed, 3 overs later 2 runs had been added. This was the sort of action that was being presented. The Keith Miller tape was coming loose from their arms. nothing adheres in this heat. Every ball from Harbhajan had excitement rising into my throat, gripping me & then dispersing as Marto’s bat came down late but sure. He had come to understand the pitch, he was coming to an understanding even of the pure enigma of Harbhajan Singh. With every ball he garnered more information. Suddenly he applied his learning and with a quiet explosion of form two tentative sweep shots found the boundary. They were tentative but considered. Tentative only in that they were absolutely safe & sure. Marto could have pulled out of them at any moment had he needed to. In the next over he came down the pitch to Kumble and sent a delivery deep into the stands behind the bowler to bring up his 100. He raised his arms casually above his head – the very picture of Steve Waugh. & then he punched the air with his fist like steve waugh never would. The transfusion was complete. The steel that once coursed through Steve’s veins was pumping freely now through Marto’s – his immune system had stopped fighting it, he had succesfully become a new entity. (Tyler Hamilton should use the Martyn case as proof of his innocence. The episode clearly demonstrates that it is possible for a person’s blood to change its makeup, to combine with another’s, through only cosmic influence – only forces of relation. I have no doubt that the foreign blood particles the testers found in Hamilton’s sample were those of his old dog Tugboat. Hamilton had taken these particles up within himself through a sentimentality so impressively forceful that upon the passing of the beloved Tugboat his very blood changed, re-membering itself to remember the dog Tyler had loved so dearly. Tugga in Martyn and Tugboat in Hamilton.) It was a tired cuddle that Martyn and Gillespie shared when the 100 came up. Marto rested his head against Dizzy’s chest and Dizzy draped his long arms around Marto. Marto was too spent to last much longer. And once Marto was gone Dizzy was never going to be able to continue. Not out of any sense of fidelity to his partner but just because the energy of the coupling was all that was keeping him going, he was never going to be able find anything from which to try and build new bonds with Clarkey or Lehmann, the headband can only do so much. Dizzy made 24 of 6000 balls. The partnership was 139 runs – the highest 5th wicket partnership vs India in India. India may well make a mockery of the epic partnership, Sehwag is already doing it, creaming McGrath for a four off the last ball of the day, but the test now could also be real close. Its been a ripper so far.

The orange patches on the pitch have turned white.