At Wankhede, history repeats itself, in reverse

More than 26 years ago, when England had an inflated sense of their own worth simply because they held the Ashes, they played host to India - and lost 2-0. They found the defeat especially painful: it had been engineered by India's medium-pacers.

Chetan Sharma, Madan Lal and Roger Binny were the kind of guys county cricketers dealt with every day: honest seamers who could wobble it around when the mood took them and conditions suited. They were no world beaters. Yet between them, they set up victories at Lord's and Headingley. England had been hoodwinked at their own game.

Something similar has happened in Mumbai these last four days, but in reverse. Perhaps forgetting the role played in their win at Ahmedabad by the pace of Umesh Yadav and the guile of Zaheer Khan, India stashed their eggs in a single basket. And the chickens came home to roost.

It's true that the injury to Yadav was a misfortune. But by drafting in Harbhajan Singh - reputation artificially boosted by his performance against a hapless and inexperienced English batting line-up in the World Twenty20 - India overplayed their hand. Harbhajan was once a great bowler, and he has the Test record to prove it.

He may play his 100th Test in Kolkata next week and make me look a fool. But his bite is not what it once was, and bite was precisely the quality needed on a Wankhede wicket that offered bounce, something missing altogether in Ahmedabad.

With Ravi Ashwin losing his line - since the second evening of the first Test, he has taken four wickets at 84, including a reverse-slogging Graeme Swann and a sweep-slogging Monty Panesar - and with Pragyan Ojha at times around 5mph slower than his left-arm counterpart Panesar, England suddenly, crazily, had the spin-bowling edge.

But was it all about pace, as MS Dhoni suggested? After all, Graeme Swann tends to give the ball more air than Panesar, yet he finished the match with 8 for 113 (India's three main spinners claimed 9 for 410 between them).

Let's laugh in the face of stereotype here. Because if England had to concede post-Ahmedabad that it was India who possessed the more dangerous seam attack in these conditions, then India may have to admit that the more potent spinners belong to England. Extra pace? Maybe. But they just bowled better.

That is not to say the result of the first Test would have been any different had Panesar played instead of Tim Bresnan. The pitch was slow, which negates the impact of his extra zip through the air, and he could have done nothing about England's first-innings collapse to 191 - an innings which seemed to have created a template for the entire series. But the extent to which Panesar and Swann outbowled Ojha, Ashwin and Harbhajan in Mumbai may be one of the most chastening experiences Indian cricket has suffered in years.

Dhoni continues to insist he wants a pitch that turns from the start. But for India's sake, that has to come hand in hand with a pitch where the ball comes through at knee, not waist, height. If Eden Gardens has a bit of life in it, Panesar and Swann will be flexing their fingers in glee. Now there's a sentence I wasn't expecting to write at the start of this series...