Nick Knight's fourth one-day century - and his first for 53 matches - was right out of the stylistic textbook of another left-hander, Graham Thorpe. Knight is usually England's fleet-footed, aerial aggressor in the first 15 overs, but here played the sober straight man to Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Flintoff, and nursed England to their highest one-day score in India.

As our graphic shows, Knight worked his runs all round the wicket, and in all he hit only seven boundaries. They accounted for only 27% of his runs; when he made 74 in the last match at Kanpur that figure was 49%. Given that 108 of the 130 balls bowled to Knight were on a good length (83%), it was an outstanding innings.

Knight manoeuvred the spinners especially well: 37 of his 55 singles (67%), and 7 off his 11 twos (64%) came off them. When facing the slower bowlers Knight was in full control of 94% of his shots; against the seamers the figure was 83%. And he took 24 runs off 31 deliveries from Anil Kumble, despite not hitting a single boundary.

After three failures in the first three matches of this series, there was an ominous repeat of the murmurs of discontent that led to Knight's ludicrous omission in the last World Cup.

Now, with these last two innings demonstrating the full range of his talents, Knight can surely look forward to a first World Cup appearance in 12 months' time.

Rob Smyth is on the staff of Wisden.com.

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