There was a fun moment in the evening gloom in Ranchi, as Shoaib Bashir prepared to bowl the fourth ball of his 31st consecutive over, shortly before the end of the most epic-scale sporting day of his young life to date.
As the left-hander Kuldeep Yadav took guard, with India 216 for seven and blocking out for stumps, Bashir decided to run in not just around the wicket, but to snake in between umpire and stumps in the classic style, memories of puce, flannel-shirted 1970s left-arm twirlers of the pre-modern age flickering suddenly across the stage, oh my John Childs and Phil Edmonds of long ago.
