He came into the press conference having done his job for India. And the joy was apparent in his demeanour.

Shanthakumaran Sreesanth was a relieved man and rightly so. It was, and is, a huge match in the context of the series and with no Zaheer Khan the real question was where are the 20 English wickets going to come from? Zaheer Khan?s boots were big boots to fill. After all it was Khan who had picked up nine English wickets at Trent Bridge in 2007, leading India to a famous win in the process. Sreesanth, justly, was under pressure. Not much had been heard about him in the series and he had bowled rather ordinarily in the tour game at Taunton. No one, not even the most ardent of Indian fans, expected Sreesanth to stand up for his captain and country.

The man himself, however, had other ideas. The conditions, without a shade of doubt, were tailormade for him. The ball was swinging around, there was movement in the air and off the pitch, the sun wasn?t out at all on day one of the Test and the cloud cover allowed him to bowl that extra over or two in each of his spells. He couldn?t have asked for more. But he still had to do a job and against men who were just coming off the back of a 200-run win. One of his victims had just scored a double hundred and was man of the match and the other had set the foundations with a fantastic 70 at Lord?s. Not having played Test cricket for well over seven months and then pitted against two of the best in the business in Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott was never going to be easy. Yet, Sreesanth was able to stand up to the challenge and set it up nicely for India.

We all knew he has the ability. The real question was does he have it in the head? Does he have the mental frame to stand up and be counted in pressure situations? A man who can land the ball on the seam with amazing regularity has seriously underachieved in the last five years, under achievement that can only be attributed to a fragile mental make- up. Known more for his off-field antics than on-field heroics, Sreesanth has rightly been tagged as the bad boy of Indian cricket, antics that have resulted into him being ticked off by his captain on more than one occasion. Controlling him has been the subject of serious debate and this, rather than his ability to pick wickets, have often taken centrestage when talking about Sreesanth.

Johannesburg 2006, where he bowled a heroic spell of five for 40 and set up an Indian win, was losing sheen and Sreesanth was fast being looked upon as a man who had not done justice to his talent. Trent Bridge was indeed his lucky break. Making the team in the absence of an injured Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth knew it was now or never. And he ensured that the ?now? was converted into a much cherished one by picking up two of England?s best in Trott and Pietersen within the first two sessions of play in the first day itself.

The Pietersen wicket, more than any other, gave him extra satisfaction. Bowling with his tail up having picked up Trott, Sreesanth tried to bounce Pietersen out the moment he came out to bat. First a slower bouncer, which was dispatched for four and then a faster bouncer with the same result, it was round one to Pietersen. In the company of Strauss, he was fast taking the game away from India when Sreesanth came back to deliver a telling blow after lunch. It was the length that did Pietersen in. It was just the length where the batsman had to play at it. And that touch of movement ensured Pietersen got the outside edge that would take him to slip. All of India breathed a sigh of relief and Sreesanth, in his own words, ?had the final laugh in the contest against Pietersen.? It was a huge moment in the series and set the match up nicely for India. Whether or not the Indians are able to capitalise only time can tell, but for Sreesanth it was his ?done that? moment. He had led the Indian fightback and ensured that Khan wasn?t missed. Only if he can now do it more consistently for his country.

The writer is a sports historian