England vs India (Day 2, 3rd Test) - The Oval, London - Friday 10th August 2007

Day 2 of the final test against India - in the series where the visitors had been incredibly lucky to be 1-0 up after the first two tests. The weather had played completely into their hands - raining just enough to see England run out of time in the first test (and fail to take just one wicket that would have seen us win); then no rain at all in the second test, just when England needed the favour returned to help us avoid defeat. Being 1-0 up going into the final game, all India needed to do was avoid defeat to be the first visitors to win a series in England for six years.

This meant, in reality, a long and tedious spell of Indian batting. With no incentive at all to declare, hurry up, or do anything to avoid wasting time, they started the day at 316-4, and settled in for pretty much an entire day of further batting. England's attack just isn't really up to much, especially in this sort of situation, so we just watched as England's bowlers toiled and toiled, without much in the way of success. It was a glorious sunny day (for once this summer), so not a bad time to be sitting in the sunshine drinking beer, but the cricket didn't offer much in the way of satisfaction for any England fans.

Despite the despair, today's play was remarkable for a number of reasons - especially if you like the statistical side of the game. India eventually finished their innings on 664 all out, and the innings was only the 11th time in test history that all 11 batsmen reached double figures - so a pretty rare thing. Anil Kumble (at 36 years old) made a century - his first ever, after 150 innings - the longest it has ever taken a test batsman to make a century. In doing so, he left this list, of players that had amassed loads of runs, but with no hundreds. Kumble had over 2,000 runs but no century, until today - and when he got to 100, the Indian fans in the ground went wild.

And that was about all to write home about really. England did bat for 8 overs at the end of the day, and even had time to lose a wicket, ensuring that saving the series finally slipped out of reach. The BBC report of the day's play obviously has much more detail, but it was not a good day for England fans - especially since it again highlighted the lack of bite in our bowling attack.