At 34/1, Zaheer Khan produced a delivery swinging in, beating the drive, and hitting the back pad bang in line with off and middle. The ball was taken just around head height by Parthiv Patel.

The decision following the appeal was somewhat intriguing – not out, with an indication by the umpire that the ball may have feathered the inside edge first.

What puzzled me when watching was this – if the umpire thought it had in fact hit the bat, then pad, then why wasn't it out caught?

Not claiming, here, that the Indians were done brown by the umpiring – merely, that I've seen this happen before, ball hits pad, is taken by the keeper, umpire turns it down when the ball looks to be bang in line. Makes me wonder – does the fielding team then need to appeal again for the catch, the minute the umpire turns it down for touch?

Otherwise, the morning's play has thus far produced much of interest – especially thanks to Willow Tv's (www.willow.tv) replay feature.

After ten overs of the Kiwi innings, I tried hitting the replay feature to rewind the innings thus far – and when you do that, two things become obvious. The Kiwi batsmen have looked to play every ball, except the really short ones, with the front foot well forward; and the Indian bowlers barring Zaheer Khan have more often than not looked to bowl at least four different lengths, and three lines, an over.

Zaheer, alone, has been outstanding (barring one nightmare over where he strayed to leg and got clipped for consecutive fours by Fleming) – on line, on length, looking to bring the batsman forward all the time, and moving it either way off the seam.

The ball that got Lou Vincent was a classic – after bending a few back into the right hander, he made one ‘go' with the arm and Vincent, trying to drive on the up, played inside line for the one cutting back, and got the edge.

The Richardson dismissal, again, was a neat exercise in thinking bowling – the batsman had focused on letting everything go outside off, Zaheer kept bringing the line closer and closer to the stumps, then put one just outside, and bent it back in, Richardson left it alone, and left himself open to the LBW.

The Indians look quite ‘up' in the field – but after 15 overs of play, it is painfully evident that in conditions like this, they are missing one top notch seam bowler to give Zaheer company.

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