Where all this talk of poor form has come from, I don’t know.” The break from cricket immediately before this Test had, he said, done him the world of good Mental freshness was important. “I got here in February, and the first thing I realised was that cricket wasn’t the centre of the world. ‘Here I am, I know the best game in the world, and nobody is playing it.’ I thought everyone was crazy.” Fortunately a sporty secondary school – Willesden High, also home to fellow England veteran Phil Defreitas – put him back on track.Lewis is worried that such places don’t exist any more “I’ve got an eight-year-old brother who loves cricket. But when he left the care of his grandmother (“I think grans are brilliant – they basically let you do what you want”) to join his father and mother in north west London at the age of 10, he was in for a bit of a shock. “It’s all right saying that we should keep tradition,” he insists. “Yes we should, but do we keep it to such a large extent that the game itself actually dies? The problem is that cricket is in a dogfight with a lot of other sports. When I go back to the West Indies now, I meet kids who have never played cricket because they’re too busy playing basketball or baseball, which would have been unheard of just a few years ago.”It’s certainly a far cry from the cricket-saturated environment in which Lewis, now 28, grew up in Guyana in the Seventies.

It comes as no surprise to discover that the dynamic Lewis is not a part of cricket’s militant backwater tendency. It’s a far cry from the extravagant spectacles of Olympiads and Euro 96, and this is exactly what a lot of people like about it. Very tall and extremely well-dressed – his shaved head topped by an Armani skull-cap – Lewis explains why everyone’s so friendly: “It’s not like Lords, they let anyone in here,” he smiles, “they let me in”.
Through the window a Second XI game steadily unfolds to a crowd comprising three men, one woman, and a dog. 100: 207 min, 165 balls, 12 fours.Umpires: K T Francis and G Sharp.TV replay umpire: D J Constant.Match referee: C W Smith..

The Oval cricket ground is a walled castle of tranquillity in the middle of South London’s urban sprawl. Pulling cheekily into the official Surrey CCC car park, you half expect to be summarily expelled by an ex- colonel with a blunderbuss, but instead a kind man in a suit points out a vacant space. At reception, a phone call to the dressing room to establish the whereabouts of the England star Chris Lewis elicits the genially imperious response: “This is he.”

One of the country’s most exciting cricketers, Lewis is now happily re- established in the national team after a year out of the game with a hip injury, and is finally threatening to lose the “enigma” tag that has dogged him throughout his career. 300 in 363 min, 92.5 overs.Atherton’s 50: 129 min, 102 balls, 7 fours.

100: 262 min, 223 balls, 14 fours.Stewart’s 50: 168 min, 114 balls, 6 fours.Hussain’s 50: 100 min, 82 balls, 5 fours. They had begun to recover from the depression that had clouded them at the beginning of the tour, though they were not yet sufficiently confident at the start of this Test to score quickly enough to impose themselves on the game.By the end of yesterday’s second session, during which Atherton and Hussain added 110 runs in 33 overs, it was slipping away fast. Sachin Tendulkar was getting some useful practice at captaining the team, and their enthusiasm did not slacken, but Hussain began like a man inspired, scoring 25 off 16 balls and 50 off 82 balls. Unaccountably, he slowed down as the day drew to a close.Only Srinath created any suggestion of insecurity in a century that came off 165 balls; Atherton had needed 223 balls, though, oddly, he had 14 boundaries in his century, which was two more than Hussain.When the England score reached 321 in the final session, the question of survival had become academic. The first shouts of “boring, boring” went up at 4.30 exactly. They should have been directed at the groundsman, not the players.Atherton’s glory, page 31Third Test scoreboardIndia won tossINDIA – First InningsV Rathore c Russell b Cork 4(13 min, 7 balls; gloved catch down leg side to wicketkeeper)N R Mongia c Russell b Lewis 9(38 min, 24 balls, 1 four; edged drive to second slip [Hick], parried to keeper)S C Ganguly c Hussain b Mullally 136(358 min, 268 balls, 17 fours, 2 sixes; well caught at third slip off thick edge)S R Tendulkar c Patel b Ealham 177(459 min, 360 balls, 26 fours; mistimed pull, caught at mid-on)S V Manjrekar c Hick b Patel 53(217 min, 144 balls, 5 fours, 1 six; mis-hit to midwicket)*M Azharuddin c Patel b Lewis 5(17 min, 11 balls; caught in leg trap at short leg)R S Dravid c Russell b Ealham 84(179 min, 149 balls, 12 fours; swish outside off-stump caught by diving keeper)A Kumble lbw b Mullally 0(4 min, 6 balls; struck on back foot to inswinger)J Srinath c Cork b Lewis 1(8 min, 9 balls; skied to third man)B K V Prasad run out (Stewart) 13(78 min, 32 balls, 1 five; direct hit at bowler’s end by Stewart running in from cover)S L V Raju not out 1(9 min, 8 balls)Extras (b6, lb12, w7, nb13) 38Total (697 min, 167 overs) 521Fall: 1-7 (Rathore), 2-33 (Mongia), 3-288 (Ganguly), 4-377 (Tendulkar), 5-385 (Azharuddin), 6-446 (Manjrekar), 7-447 (Kumble), 8-453 (Srinath), 9-513 (Prasad).Bowling: Lewis 37-10-89-3 (nb9, w1) (7-0-23-1, 5-1-16-0, 4-1-9-0, 4-2- 4-0, 5-2-11-0, 2-1-4-0, 3-1-12-1, 7-2-10-1); Cork 32-6-124-1 (nb4) (8- 2-27-1, 3-0-29-0, 6-2-14-0, 7-2-22-0, 3-0-8-0, 5-0-24-0); Mullally 40- 12-88-2 (nb1, w1) (3-1-9-0, 8-2-15-0, 2-0-8-0, 7-1-14-0, 7-2-15-1, 5-3- 5-0, 3-2-1-1, 2-0-16-0, 3-1-5-0); Ealham 29-9-90-2 (6-1-17-0, 6-3-18-0, 6-3-20-0, 3-1-11-1, 5-1-13-0, 3-0-11-1); Patel 24-2-101-1 (nb2) (1-0-6- 0, 5-0-20-0, 9-1-30-0, 1-0-11-0, 1-0-6-0, 7-1-28-1); Hick 4-1-8-0; Thorpe 1-0-3-0 (one spell each).ENGLAND – First Innings*M A Atherton not out 145(409 min, 329 balls, 17 fours)A J Stewart c Mongia b Srinath 50(170 min, 115 balls, 6 fours; thinnest of inside edges to keeper)N Hussain not out 107(238 min, 180 balls, 12 fours)Extras (b3,lb9,nb8) 20Total (for 1, 409 min, 102 overs) 322Fall: 1-130 (Stewart).To bat: G P Thorpe, G A Hick, C C Lewis, R C Russell, D G Cork, M A Ealham, M M Patel, A D Mullally.Bowling: Srinath 27-7-82-1 (nb5) (13-3-45-0, 8-3-21-1, 3-1-10-0, 3-0- 6-0); Prasad 24-6-78-0 (nb3) (4-1-16-0, 6-2-15-0, 4-1-16-0, 3-1-12-0, 7-1-19-0); Kumble 18-3-62-0 (nb1) (1-0-2-0 3-1-4-0 4-0-21-0 10-2-35-0); Raju 22-4-45-0 (10-3-21-0, 11-1-23-0, 1-0-1-0); Gang uly 6-0-24-0 (nb2) (1-0-6-0, 5-0-18-0); Tendulkar 5-0-19-0.Progress: Second day close: 32-0 (Atherton 21, Stewart 10) 11 overs Third day: 50 in 74 min, 16.5 overs 100 in 130 min, 30.4 overs Lunch 128-0 (Atherton 69, Stewart 49) 42 overs 150 in 183 min, 45.4 overs 200 in 246 min, 62.1 overs Tea 238-1 (Atherton 111, Hussain 57) 74 overs 250 in 300 min, 78.3 overs New ball taken after 83 overs at 268-1. A precautionary X-ray showed that nothing had been fractured, but the parts of the Indian captain’s body that have suffered most are his mind and his heart.

He is one of the world’s great batsmen and yet he has scored exactly 34 runs in four Test innings in this series.His tragedy – if the loss of a Test series can ever justify such depth of pity – is that India now look like a team that could win a five-match series. By 12.25pm Atherton had reached his 50 (another bit of luck, incidentally, as the ball skied to the boundary off a top edge); by lunch they had added 96 to the overnight score of 32 for no wicket and the fear of defeat was already less pressing.Before lunch, Azharuddin had retired to the dressing-room, having taken a drive from Stewart on the foot. He meant that India’s first-innings total of 521 was so forbidding that the way to reach it was to treat each session separately and to survive each one in turn. England have rarely survived so well or given less away; they lost only one wicket and scored 290 runs. The follow-on was saved with the last ball of the day, which England finished on 322 for one It was like a score from an old volume of Wisden.