India v England: Jonathan Trott finally steps up to the plate as a key lieutenant under Alastair Cook's leadership The lead given by Cook had been, for once, an all too human one. He had tensed up. "What we have we hold," Cook proclaimed. He had gone from low-risk batting in the first three Tests to no-risk blocking; and cricket doesn't like to see positivity shelved, whatever the motive. Cook had forgotten the path he had shown to everyone else. England got back into this series because he, and Kevin Pietersen, broke the stranglehold that Pragyan Ojha had exerted in Ahmedabad. And here Ojha was joined by another left-armer in Ravi Jadeja in reapplying that stranglehold. So anxious was Cook that when he reached his hundred - 100 balls for the match, that is - he had scored a grand total of four singles. When he fell to a highly dubious decision for the second time in the match - and accidents are far more likely to happen when you are blocking - England had accumulated only 48 in 30 overs. Trott, having done everything in the last three years that an infantrymen has to do, knew exactly how to go about raising the siege. He instantly fired a mortar, sweeping his first ball for four, and began the process of moving the attackers around. Less run-hungry batsmen would have turned their back on the ball that Jadeja let dribble down the pitch, and settled for the no-ball. Trott, never shy of a confrontation, but now self-controlled when one arrives, exerted his right to smack it to square-leg for four. The major flare-up came when Trott, 43, tried to cut Ishant Sharma and, on the balance of available evidence, nicked it to the keeper. He stood his ground while the verbals flew like machine-gun fire. It had been too nice a Test series for a big altercation until this point. This is often the way when both teams stay in the same hotel, as here, and they have to rub along together at meal times. It had been "after you, Kumar, no, after you, Claude." But the pleasantries went out the window at this critical moment - and it was good, not embarrassing, to see the passions roused and how much each country's representatives care. India had been too supine in Calcutta, but not on Sunday. Unperturbed by enemy fire, Trott maintained his positive intent until the close. He scored 35 runs off the 88 balls he faced from India's two left-armers, Ojha and Jadeja, while England's other batsmen, including Pietersen, scored only 31 runs off the other 146 balls the pair bowled. And Trott did not make the same mistake twice. He had shouldered arms in his first innings and been bowled by Jadeja, who gets close to the stumps in delivery and is therefore a different geometric proposition from Ojha. Pietersen, without the genius for taking infinite pains, fell artlessly into Jadeja's trap. Trott had not enjoyed a great 12 months, going into the Nagpur decider with only one Test century in the current calendar year. But when the trumpet sounded, he affixed his bayonet and, on his own initiative, led England's counterattack.