Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin turn the Kanpur Test on its head

For four-plus hours over days two and three, Kane Williamson looked immense at the crease. His timing was immaculate, and he judged well when to play the sweep. He used his feet against the spinners, and put power into his shots, looking every bit the world-class batsman he is rated to be.

And then, he stood flabbergasted. One from Ravichandran Ashwin spun too much, just too much from back of length, and Williamson had gone back in his crease to cut it away. The ball was pitched outside off, and with the batsman covered its line, there was no way it would come in to the stumps. It did, and he was beaten, and bowled.

“It was a great delivery. To beat him like that, in between bat and pad, when he was covering the line, it was a brilliant one,” said Ravindra Jadeja, at the end of day’s play.

Considering what had been on display for the past two days, it was a freak delivery. Many watching jumped to pronounce it ‘ball of this century’, or the millennium, or whatever time frame they liked. Yes, Ashwin had put in the effort and ripped it. And yet the zip it got off the surface couldn’t be denied. The pitch had changed, deteriorated to be precise, and this moment of certifiable proof escaped attention amidst the hullabaloo.

Let it also be said here, though, that the Green Park wicket wasn’t the focal point on day three. Instead, it was the manner in which the Indian spinners bowled in tandem. Day two was about New Zealand’s top order showing that they weren’t deterred by spin. In a way they threw down the challenge, asking the opposition to raise its game. Ashwin and Jadeja responded in fine style.

The first order of business was drying up the runs, and opening with spin from both ends became vital herein. No pacers meant no freebies for the batsmen, and the two spinners were on the money from the word go. When Tom Latham was out leg before in the fifth over of the day, the preceding 18 deliveries were dot balls during which he was beaten twice, and Williamson once.

One of the key aspects of New Zealand’s batting on day two was the degree of luck they enjoyed. In a match that lasts five days though, that factor can vary from one extreme to the other. On this day then, it was India’s turn to get some favourable decisions. Ross Taylor, and last Ish Sodhi, were marginal calls. Luke Ronchi’s dismissal was clearly a bad call, but it is an accepted part of the game. It doesn’t take anything away from Ashwin’s guile and Jadeja’s precision, either.

Williamson’s wicket might have been the vital one, but it was in no way the correct measure of Ashwin’s ability on this pitch. The true indicator was seen in the way he worked out Latham first, and Mitchell Santner later.

Against Latham, he came round the wicket and put more drift on the ball. It allowed him to get a touch quicker, enough to beat the batsman who thought he had the line covered. He didn’t, as the ball dipped past his bat and it was the most plumb LBW decision of the day. Santner’s dismissal was a classic one of a left-hander against an off-spinner; only the turn wasn’t as sharp as it had been at times, Williamson’s case in particular. The batsman played expansively and paid the price.

The day belonged to Jadeja, however. By his own admission after play, the spinner doesn’t believe there is any great secret to his variations. "I don’t know how it happens. I have played on unprepared wickets since childhood, so maybe it is a derivative of that. I just know where to pitch the ball,” he said, after picking 5/73, his fifth five-wicket haul in Test cricket.

Perhaps unclear to him, Jadeja did let slip his secret. In "knowing" where exactly to put the ball, and doing it repeatedly in his trademark precise manner, he gets into the head of the opposition. Last year, when South African batsmen were busy getting bowled to straight deliveries, they were afflicted with this very same malaise. They were thinking too much.

The mental factor isn’t really troubling the Kiwis, and they showed this enough in two partnerships, between Williamson-Latham and Santner-Ronchi. What they were not able to comprehend however is amplification of the unpredictability of Jadeja’s trajectory on a wearing pitch. It is what hurried Taylor, and Ronchi, into false shots on quicker deliveries. Not to mention, the lower order was even more clueless against this quality.

Jadeja termed his over with three wickets in five balls as a game-changer. It is certainly true. However, its significance is higher. That over highlighted the fault in New Zealand’s tactic of playing five bowlers. They have a long tail, and their lower order batsmen are like deer caught in the headlights.

Time and again, New Zealand will only rely on their top order to put up any semblance of resistance. As such, the 107-run partnership between Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara may have already put this Test beyond their reach.