England in driving seat despite swashbuckling efforts of Rishabh Pant - Chris Waters

The former Yorkshire and England captain, who would have been 90 on February 24, famously negotiated the nation’s highways and byways at terrifying speed, often with a cigarette in one hand and a copy of the Racing Post in the other.

So notorious were Close’s motoring skills, which once left his car atop a hedge (the result of an ill-advised grab for a portable radio while navigating a bend), that the Yorkshire players used to avoid travelling with him at all costs.

Almost as many stories were told about Close’s driving as they were about his cricket; on one occasion he even asked an ashen-faced team-mate to lean over and take the wheel while he himself poured a mug of tea and checked the runners and riders.

Sitting in a car with Close must have been a bit like watching Rishabh Pant bat – particularly if you are an India supporter with a vested interest in the outcome of a game in which your team is trying to stay alive.

It is fitting, in fact, that the last three letters of Pant’s first name are “ABH”, for “Actual Bodily Harm” is more or less what he inflicts on opponents, as he showed with a swashbuckling 91 on day three of the Chennai Test.

Pant, who faced only 88 balls and hit nine fours and five sixes, all of the maximums muscled off the left-arm spinner Jack Leach towards the long-on region, helped to rescue his team after they had slipped to 73-4 in reply to England’s 578, sharing 119 for the fifth-wicket with the former Yorkshire batsman Cheteshwar Pujara, who scored 73 in almost four hours in a stand that put one in mind of The Tortoise and the Hare.

But as was the case when Close was driving, one always felt that Pant could run into peril at any moment, and when the squat left-hander went “inside-out” to loft a tiring Dom Bess into the hands of Leach at deep extra-cover, India’s hopes of saving the match took a serious blow, the hosts reaching 257-6 at stumps, still 321 behind.

Those who live by the sword die by the sword, and Pant – whose innings at least gave rise to hope that the match can be saved – clearly puts little store by personal milestones, given that he has now perished four times in the 90s in his 17 Tests.

The 23-year-old – who has two Test centuries to his name – appears to know only one way to play, which is the cricketing equivalent of a high-speed police chase across black ice.

There is a touch of the Adam Gilchrist about Pant in that he is a swashbuckling left-hander and also a wicketkeeper, albeit not a gloveman of Gilchrist’s quality, if actually a Test-quality gloveman at all.

But whereas Gilchrist often found himself walking to the crease with Australia in a position of strength, Pant walked into a crisis here after Jofra Archer got rid of both openers before Bess took out the key engine room of Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane, later adding the scalp of Pujara.

Bess, another 23-year-old, is effectively trying to learn the art of spin bowling while playing at the highest level, as opposed to having reached that level with a significant amount 
of experience in the tank.

This is only his 50th first-class game, 13 of which have been Tests, and he is not yet the half-finished article, let alone that of the finished variety.

Bess, of course, did the opposite of Close – moving to Yorkshire last year from Somerset, 50 years after Close was sacked by Yorkshire and threw in his lot with the West Country club.

There comparisons end, although Close would have appreciated Bess’s dismissal of Pujara, a short delivery being bludgeoned to short-leg where it thudded into a ducking Ollie Pope and looped out to Rory Burns at mid-wicket.

Close, of course, took so many blows at short-leg that the comedian Eric Morecambe famously quipped that all you had to do to know when the cricket season had started was to listen out for the sound of Brian Close being hit by the ball.

Close himself – when asked how he could possibly withstand so much pain and punishment – stated equally famously: “How can the ball hurt you? It’s only on you for a bloody second.”

There was an element of fortune also in Bess’s dismissal of Rahane, who cracked a full toss to cover where Joe Root took a brilliant one-handed catch, diving to his left.

Kohli was undone by a good one which turned and bounced outside his off stump, but the India captain pushed too hard at it in defence with an angled 
bat and was snapped up at short-leg.

Bess’s figures of 4-55 from 23 overs were in marked contrast to those of fellow spinner Leach, whose end-of-day return of 0-94 from 17 overs hardly told the full story.

Panned and pulverised by Pant, Leach at one stage had figures of 4-0-41-0 – expensive even in T20 – and then 0-77 from eight overs before fighting back well.

Leach might have had a wicket, but Archer spilled a tough chance over his shoulder running back from long-on when Washington Sundar was 25.

Sundar had reached 33 at the close and added 32 runs inside 18 overs with Ravi Ashwin after Pant’s dismissal; it remains to be seen whether Archer’s drop is costly.

India, though, have not looked “on it”, their concentration as distracted as someone trying to drive a car while studying the 2.45 at Kempton in the Racing Post.

Without Pant’s seat-of-the-pants display, they might already be guaranteed to crash and burn.

As it was, like one of Close’s passengers, they were still clinging on for dear life.

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