England Lose Openers After Solid Stand

England lost their openers during the afternoon session as they built a lead of 85 by tea on a laborious fourth day in Nagpur while trying to ensure the opportunity of a famous series win does not slip from their grasp. Nick Compton fell on the stroke of the interval to give India timely boost but the home side had used strange tactics earlier in the day when they batted on defensively for an hour.

England only have one aim in mind - to keep hold of the precious series lead - so the pace of the game is no concern to them, but India's passiveness when they resumed their innings on 297 for 8 and batted bizarrely for an hour took vital time out of the match. MS Dhoni finally declared with India still four runs behind.

The pitch remains docile in the extreme, verging on dead, and their best hope was that the pressure started to tell on England during their final push for a famous series victory. The third innings of a Test which is seemingly heading to a draw can leave a side uncertain how to play. England's lead certainly hasn't grown at a pace to take the game completely away from India.

Cook and Compton, however, ensured there were no early alarms as they cautiously reached lunch. Compton struck the day's first boundary, five minutes before the break, when he edged a very full delivery from R Ashwin to third man. Cook had reached 5 from 78 balls before finding the rope with a cover drive from another very full ball.

For the second time in the match Cook was removed through an umpiring error from Kumar Dharmasena when he played forward to Ashwin and the ball spun past the outside edge. There was a strong appeal, and there was a noise, but replays confirmed that Cook's bat had struck the ground and he had missed the ball. It left Cook with a match tally off 14 off 121 balls, but it did nothing to dilute the epic nature of his series which ended with 562 runs.

Compton's solidity alongside Cook has been one of the major plusses to come out of this series. His defence had been firm throughout the session but in the final over before tea he was given lbw to Pragyan Ojha. Replays suggested an inside edge but the ball was also caught in the gully so the presence of DRS would only have changed the mode of dismissal.

One of more interesting moments of the day involved Jonathan Trott. A delivery from Ravindra Jadeja slipped out of the spinner's hand, during the delivery action, and lobbed towards the on-side. Trott, as was completely within his rights, skipped towards the ball then smacked it to the square-leg boundary to bring smiles from both sides.

Quite what India were trying to achieve at the start of the day was hard to fathom as they added 29 in 13 overs. Ashwin started by declining singles, while Ojha purely blocked, before a message from the dressing room encouraged Ashwin to take the singles on offer. The problem with that was that Ojha couldn't get the ball away so the match went nowhere.

England were quite happy to let India dawdle. It quickly became clear that they weren't trying too hard to take the remaining two wickets, content to allow India to prod and poke around to take time out of the game. When Monty Panesar bowled Ojha, helped by the rare sight of some turn and bounce from the rough, there was barely a flicker of emotion from any of the players and even Panesar - who had waited 50 overs for a wicket - didn't manage as much as a clap.

Further instructions came out from the dressing room twice, but the plans never really changed much from the batsmen. Ashwin, who has batted superbly during the series, was in no trouble at the crease but neither did he do any damage and it took nine overs for anything other than a single to be scored.