India 135 for 1 (Jaiswal 57, Rohit 52*, Gill 26*) trail England 218 (Crawley 79, Kuldeep 5-72, Ashwin 4-51) by 83 runs

Few spin bowlers in history have served up a greater frequency of wicket-taking deliveries than Kuldeep has now managed, for in rushing through to his first five-wicket haul of a quietly devastating campaign, he brought up his 50th Test wicket from just 1871 deliveries – faster than any spinner since Jonny Briggs in the 19th Century, and more than 55 overs more brisk than India’s next quickest to the mark, Axar Patel, the man who tormented England on their last tour in 2021.

In the course of his innings, Jaiswal rushed past Virat Kohli’s previous record for most runs in a Test series against England (655). Having crossed the 700-mark en route to his fifty, he had Sunil Gavaskar’s legendary tally of 774 in the Caribbean in 1970-71, the most by an India batter in any series, very much in sight too. But then, in a rush of blood, he charged past a wide one from Bashir, having slapped his previous two deliveries for four, to be stumped for 57, and with a third century of the series at his mercy.

Mercy, however, was in broadly short supply on a dismal day for England. The tale of the tape was a sorry one, no matter how thinly you sliced their latest batting collapse. They lost all ten wickets for 154 after Kuldeep’s first-over googly had foxed a free-flowing Duckett; they lost their last nine for 118 after a skittish Ollie Pope had run past another googly to be stumped, rather gruesomely, on the stroke of lunch.

Worst of all, however, was their mid-afternoon meltdown – five wickets for eight runs between overs 44 and 50, including – surely uniquely – three elite batters with a century of caps each, and not a run added between them in the space of ten balls, as Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root and Ben Stokes came and went with the sort of whimper that England’s no-consequences mindset had been intended to banish.