New Zealand 262 All-out ( Jadeja 5-73, Ashwin 4-93) trail India 318 by 56 runs

India only took one wicket on day two, but with the spinners getting the ball to spit and hiss with increasing frequency, it had seemed a matter of time before something gave way. Rain brought the Test match to an uneasy pause, wiping out an entire session, but the morning of day three brought the promised drama: four wickets for 86 runs in 38 overs, leaving New Zealand 80 adrift of India's first-innings total at lunch, with five wickets in hand.

Three of those wickets, including those of Kane Williamson and Tom Latham, who put on 124 for the second wicket, came in the space of 23 balls at the start of the day's play, leaving New Zealand 170 for 4 and 148 adrift. A fifth-wicket partnership of 49 between Luke Ronchi and Mitchell Santner, consuming 23.3 overs, brought a measure of calm to proceedings before Ravindra Jadeja struck six overs before lunch to leave India in the ascendancy.

Ronchi was the batsman dismissed, and India would have been relieved to see him walk back. Showing excellent footwork, particularly while going on the back foot, he had cut and driven Jadeja and R Ashwin for four fours in the arc between point and extra-cover in moving to 38. Then, looking to sweep Jadeja, he misread the trajectory of a dipping delivery that hit him on the back leg. Rod Tucker gave him out, but replays suggested that the ball, bowled from left-arm over and spinning sharply, may have missed off stump.

The day began much like day two had ended, prematurely, with Ashwin and Jadeja causing plenty of discomfort with their turn and bounce. They beat the outside edge four times in the first five overs - Ashwin beating Latham twice, Jadeja beating Williamson twice - before Ashwin struck the first blow. He got the ball to drift into the left-handed Latham, causing him to play down the wrong line as he pressed forward to defend. By the time he realised this, it was too late, and ball straightened to hit front pad right in front.

Four balls later, 159 for 2 became 160 for 3. Ross Taylor's bat tends to come down from gully towards wide mid-on while he defends, and such a technique can leave a batsman vulnerable against a left-arm spinner as relentlessly stump-to-stump as Jadeja. The ball went with the arm, and Richard Kettleborough did not hesitate to uphold Jadeja's lbw appeal. Replays suggested it was a tight call on whether the ball would have carried on to hit or miss leg stump.

For most of day two, Williamson had been able to trust the slowness of the Green Park pitch and play comfortably back to good-length balls. But in the half-hour or so before tea, the ball had begun turning and jumping with greater frequency. On one occasion, an Ashwin offbreak hurried into him when he sat on the back foot and produced a loud lbw shout.

In the ninth over of the morning, he went back again to Ashwin, possibly shaping to cut or punch through the off side, and this time the ball turned extravagantly, like one of Muttiah Muralitharan's specials, zipping in to breach the gap between bat and body and clip the top of the stumps. It may have needed a special delivery to get Williamson out in the form he was in, and Ashwin, with a bit of help from the pitch, had produced just that.