Who was that? Neither of the Sikhs in the team, Harbhajan Singh nor Sarandeep Singh, wore a netting around their beard. In any case, those are black. Hell, it was Anil Kumble in bandage. What was he doing out there? Men with their jaws falling off, if their name is not Rick McCosker, shouldn't be on cricket fields. Was this brave - or stupid? Kumble was to be leaving for India tomorrow, we were told at tea. He had been hit on the jaw yesterday by Merv Dillon, spent the night in pain, and the fracture had been discovered this morning. The jaw was loose and shaky.

A local dentist had kept it together, but surgery was inevitable. As far as the physio Andrew Leipus was concerned, Kumble had to be on the next flight home.

But late this afternoon, Kumble caught a glimpse of Sachin Tendulkar turning the ball and bowling Wavell Hinds behind the legs. He decided to go out and bowl himself. A special clearance was needed from the dentist who had patched the jaw together.

His very presence lifted India. Fine leg, where Kumble was fielding, was the Indian corner, where a few families had their tri-colours waving the whole day. Now, they broke into the Hindi version of We Shall Overcome. By sheer irony, an ambulance sirened by just outside the ground.

Kumble not only kept it tight, he threatened. He dismissed Brian Lara. He was dying to exult, you could tell, but the bandages only allowed for so much. The eyes lit up and there was the merest hint of a gritty smile.

Back at the fine-leg fence Leipus kept adjusting the bandage because the sweat made it wet and slippery, and Kumble's jaw was just being held in place.

About 40 minutes after the Lara dismissal, Kumble almost turned the match on its head. Hooper was on 3, and the total on 157, when David Shepherd amiably turned down a plumb lbw shout. Soon after, Hooper was caught at bat pad – off a no-ball. It was desperately disappointing. The very next delivery took off like it was a last-day Delhi pitch, and beat even the keeper. Eventually Kumble finished with a very good, unbroken spell of 14-5-29-1. From a man who had been ingloriously dumped from the side, this was no less than moving.

The high drama towards the end of the day eclipsed what had been a special moment in the life of Ajay Ratra. Twenty years of age and in awful form, he reached a century in his third Test match to become only the second keeper in Indian history to make a hundred overseas. He is in elite company too – the first one to do so was Vijay Manjrekar who kept wicket in the match he scored 118, in Jamaica in 1952-53. If Ratra couldn't stop beaming after the match, he was justified.

So India still have a chance. A little more urgency would have made things better. India reached 513 at 11.25 on the third morning, after 196 overs of batting. Not good enough for any proud batting side like Australia. Basically,India were about three hours behind the ball.

Yet, today was not about the delicate balance of the Test. It was about Anil Kumble, because acts of courage live longer than a statistic. Kumble didn't show the heart of a champion just because he took the field, but because he made it work. When Leipus said that "he's (Kumble) got a humongous heart," he was right. Kumble today was an inspiration.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com in India. His reports will appear here throughout the Test series.

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