Dinesh Karthik hits a six-and-a-half

No, they're not doing nines yet. It's just rhetoric. There, that saved a few of you having to comment, didn't it?

We've heard a lot about Karthik's middle-order stroke-playing credentials, but we hadn't seen much evidence until yesterday. He's seemed like a classic, blunter of an opener so far this series - a good one, at that.

But at one point yesterday, he backed round a Monty Panesar delivery that pitched on leg and lifted it into the off-side over extra cover for six. It was a special shot.

In the end, he seemed a bit unlucky to be given out for 91. However, that was nothing compared to Sourav Ganguly's dismissal - lbw despite a huge inside edge.

Ganguly's always been a combative character. It's both his most and least admirable characteristic, paradoxically. With that in mind, the Prince of Calcutta (shouldn't that be Kolkata now?) deserves some sort of International Good Humour award for the smiling demonstration he gave as he left the field.

To return to Karthik, we're pretty sure we heard Sunil Gavaskar saying that he'd changed the spelling of his surname to 'Kaarthik', but we're not writing that until someone else does. Apparently, a numerologist told him he'd be more successful with an extra 'a'. Our name's chock full of 'a's - you won't catch us 'being successful'.

England v India, third Test at the Oval, day one
India 316 (Dinesh Karthik 91, Rahul Dravid 55)