Bowlers don't always get what they deserve, but Matthew Hoggard earned his three wickets on the third day at Bangalore with a beautiful display of seam bowling. Yesterday, only 5% of his deliveries were met with uncontrolled strokes - that's edges, play-and-misses, or any shot that is in some way false. But today, the figure was a startling 37%; in other words, he induced two uncontrolled strokes every over. The main reason for this was an old-fashioned adherence to a perfect line-and-length. Hoggard did not bowl a single ball further leg-side than middle stump, and 95% of his deliveries pitched between just outside off and off-and-middle. By contrast, the figure for Andrew Flintoff was 69%. Flintoff's leg theory is only partly to blame for this: he bowled only five deliveries in the crucial must-play corridor on off-and-middle, as against 21 from Hoggard. The batsmen were able to ignore Hoggard deliveries only 7% of the time (6 out of 84), but for Flintoff the figure was 27% (15 out of 55).

Part of the reason for that was Hoggard's exemplary length. Whereas yesterday he dropped short 27% of the time (10 out of 36), today he found a good length 83% of the time (70 out of 84). And he bowled only two half-volleys all day. The fact the ball was swinging certainly helped. Yesterday Hoggard deviated only 13% of his deliveries significantly off the straight (5 out of 36); today he moved 73% of them (61 of 84), mostly away from the bat.

Hoggard bowled particularly well to Virender Sehwag, who made an at-times-fortuitous 66. Sehwag did give Hoggard some punishment (39 off 57 balls), but he was lucky a lot of the time: he played 29 uncontrolled strokes in his 88-ball innings, and 23 of them (that's nearly 80%) were off Hoggard.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com

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