Hussain turns Test into masterclass in art of decision-making

It was 1990 all over again at Lord's this weekend. Late July, England v India, blazing sunshine, parched pitch, rollicking run-rates, and a resounding England victory built on a sharp contrast in the fortunes of the two captains. Each time, England's captain had the match of his life while India's made one crucial mistake. Twelve years ago, Mohammad Azharuddin put England in to bat and watched them pile up 653 for 4; last week, Sourav Ganguly preferred three seamers to two spinners, and left out Harbhajan Singh. In a game of two-fors and three-fors, the man most likely to take five wickets was not even on the field – a clanger so obvious that Ganguly ended up not bothering to defend it.

Nasser Hussain's display will not loom as large in the record books as Graham Gooch's 333 and 123, but that says more about the nature of records, with their blinkered insistence on bald numbers, than about anything else. Hussain's 155 was not just the biggest innings of this match, and by far the longest, but the most influential. It began when England, on 0 for 1 and bereft of Marcus Trescothick for the first time, were up against it, and it was the only one of the four hundreds to come while the game was still under construction. Hussain had the patience to see off Zaheer Khan's new-ball swing, the grit to bat all day, and the wit to unsettle Anil Kumble by feinting to go down the pitch, then rocking back to cut.

But plenty of batsmen can make a hundred – even a bowler can, as Ajit Agarkar, a Bombay Duck no longer, confirmed. What made Hussain's match something special was his captaincy. Nearly everything he tried came off, starting before the match. A clatter of injuries turned the selection from a foregone conclusion – same XI plus Gough – to a jigsaw puzzle. An earlier England panel might have hummed the media tune and picked Ian Bell ahead of John Crawley to replace Trescothick. Hussain and his co-selectors preferred to be consistent, and Crawley repaid them handsomely. He may be as vulnerable as most Englishmen in the face of Glenn McGrath, but against Asian teams he is Bradman – in five Tests against Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, he has three hundreds, two fifties and an average, for what it's worth, of 97.

Simon Jones, although raw, was a more orthodox English pick, taking his place somewhere in the middle of a spectrum that stretches from Frank Tyson (Ashes winner) to Martin McCague (cannon fodder). But Craig White, shelved in the winter for being too slow, was as much of a hunch as he was last time Hussain and Duncan Fletcher plucked him from county cricket, early in 2000. The decision to put him in the final XI left Dominic Cork fuming, but White's busy 50 helped shape the game even before he brought out the mortal in Tendulkar. In the first innings, England's bottom five scored 185, which was 179 more than their opposite numbers.

England's attack consisted of two specialist seamers, one a complete novice, the other offering a little more experience but brittle confidence; two allrounders, both batsmen-who-bowl for their counties; and a creaking, no-mystery spinner. Two of the five picked up injuries during the match. And still they took 20 wickets. Hussain was making bricks, or nicks, out of straw.

A captain takes hundreds of decisions in a five-day game and cannot get them all right. Hussain was curiously quick to defend in India's first innings, often setting the field as if he had 280 in the bank, not 480. He allowed, or instructed, Ashley Giles to bowl over the wicket most of the time, which should have been a last resort when there was easily enough turn to make classical left-arm spin, aimed at off stump, a tricky proposition. And it was puzzling that he brought Jones back at the end when he was struggling with a side strain. Perhaps, having won a match with a second-string attack, Nasser now fancies having a go with the thirds.

The proof of the pudding, however, is in the beating. Eight times, a change of bowling brought a wicket in the next over. Statistically, this is not astonishing, as Hussain, protecting his bowlers from the heat, made 43 bowling changes in the match. But it is still good going. And it is the kind of knack that feeds off itself, lifting the troops and deflating the opposition.

A bowler may have a golden arm; can a captain have a golden brain? What he does have, as well as the formidably analytical Fletcher, is strong support within the team. At Lord's, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff were added to the management committee, deputising for Gough and Trescothick, and both responded to the responsibility. Vaughan played a Tresco-esque vice-captain's innings, led the ball-soaking operation (it was reversing by the 35th over), held three catches and took a top-order wicket. Flintoff thumped 59 at a run a ball, bowled like a miser when it mattered, and acted as celebrator-in-chief, enveloping every other bowler in a BFG hug.

England have now won three Tests in a row, something which has not happened since... last year, when they won two in Sri Lanka before beating Pakistan. Fortified by this hat-trick, they duly lost their next four Tests. But Hussain was largely absent. If he stays fit, this series will surely belong to him.

Tim de Lisle is editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2003.