England needed 45 in 18 balls. And they decided they would not take any chances to try and manufacture boundaries off a third of those balls.
And it was understandable. It was okay. It was even smart. Because Jasprit Bumrah bowled those six balls.
When sport becomes theatre, it often does so through the medium of unpredictability. The 18th over of Thursday night's T20 World Cup semi-final was different. It was sporting drama of heightened predictability. You knew exactly what Bumrah would try to do, ball after ball after ball.
This is a man who has mastered pretty much every delivery that has existed in the history of fast bowling. But late in a T20 game, when India are defending a total, when he's operating on one of the flattest and least forgiving pitches the Wankhede Stadium has ever produced, you know he's going to pare his art down to its fundamentals, to the thing that first made his name.
You knew Bumrah would go fast, full, straight, at the stumps, and do it six times in six balls. You knew he would nail most of his yorker attempts, and you knew even the ones he missed would be hard to hit - we've marvelled at his full-toss economy rate year after year after year.
And you knew England wouldn't try anything out of the box to hit his yorkers to the boundary, or to try and shift him away from his plan. You knew all this even though they needed 45 off 18, with five wickets in hand, with Jacob Bethell playing the innings of his life and batting on 94 off 42 balls, and with lower-order muscle still to come.
You knew England wouldn't like the idea of taking just six runs off this over, but you knew they would take it if it meant no wickets lost, and the chance of going into the last 12 balls needing 39. Six of those balls would be bowled by Hardik Pandya, and the other six, no doubt the last six, by either a spinner or an as-yet unused sixth bowler. England were looking to get out of this Bumrah over unscathed, even if only in wicket terms, so they could go after those last 12 balls, and hopefully whittle their target down to within three or four big hits in those last six.
You knew, therefore, almost exactly what you were going to get from this 18th over. And you almost knew exactly how it would play out. Bumrah would spear ball after ball into the base of the stumps from around the wicket. The two left-hand batters would keep drilling the ball to deep fielders down the ground or whipping it to deep fielders on the leg side, always along the ground, denied leverage to go aerial, and rushing between the wickets in the hope of pinching a second run somewhere.
Six balls, six yorkers or near-yorkers, six runs, no wickets, and a stadium on its feet, feeling blessed to have witnessed this spectacle. No boundaries, no wickets. Six balls of chilling predictability.
With that, Bumrah walked off to his fielding position, his main job for the day done, his hopes of playing another match in this tournament now in the hands of other people.
4-0-33-1. An economy rate of 8.25 in a match with an overall run rate of nearly 12.5. Where the 36 non-Bumrah overs went at nearly 13.
Sanju Samson was the Player of the Match, but he didn't think he should have been.
"All credit goes to Jasprit Bumrah," he said. "World-class bowler, once-in-a-generation bowler - that's what he delivered today. I think this should go to him, actually. If he didn't bowl that way in the death overs, I would not be standing here."
Du Plessis breaks down what makes Bumrah so valuable and unplayable
The death-overs mastery was only one facet of Bumrah's performance. And if that facet was all about a heightened predictability, the very best bit, which came right at the beginning, was all about the unexpected.
Except Harry Brook really, really should have expected it.
While preparing for this semi-final, Brook must have sat down and watched videos of Bumrah's previous spells in this tournament. He must have watched the Ryan Rickelton ball. And the Roston Chase ball.
And it's nothing new. Bumrah has been bowling deadly, dipping offcutter slower balls all through his career.
But knowing that a variation is likely to come can only help so much. A batter still has to be able to pick it out of one of the snappiest and most delayed wrist actions in the business. And Brook, stepping out, stepping leg side, looking for routes to the boundary with a gargantuan target before him, had plenty else to think about.
To Bumrah, a batter renowned for creating room and hitting over the covers was perhaps the ideal candidate for a first-ball slower ball. You want room for your arms? Here, let me make you reach out even further, pull your bat so far from your body that you lose all semblance of shape.
Brook was into his shot so early that there was even time for a moment of dawning horror, a moment where he tried to check his shot. His bottom hand came off the handle, but his top hand's doings were already out of his control. Ball met bat a long, long way in front of Brook's body, and ballooned high over the off side, dropping where a deep point would have been.
There was no deep point. We would not be recalling this ball in so much detail if Axar Patel, sprinting from cover on the 30-yard circle, hadn't taken one of the catches of this World Cup.
But Axar wouldn't have had a chance to take that catch if Bumrah hadn't bowled this magic, mesmeric delivery. Cricket works like that. It's a team game.
It's for that reason, too - in this case regrettably - that we haven't spent all that much time talking up the other things Bumrah has done at this World Cup. Even the other slower balls he's bowled. His display against South Africa was one of the best by any bowler in this tournament, but India lost that game. Heavily. Other topics forced their way to the front of the queue.
Faf du Plessis and Anil Kumble tackle the big questions from India's win at the Wankhede
We have a chance now to remedy the situation, and to talk, at least, of the Rickelton ball. Another dipping slower offcutter, wrenching another batter completely out of shape. And like the ball to Brook, this was remarkable for its execution and its conception, particularly the shrewd choice of victim.
Rickelton and Brook are entirely different as batters. Rickelton, for one, bats left-handed, and favours the leg side. But just as Brook's liking for making room and freeing his arms leaves him susceptible to losing control of his bat-swing, so too does Rickelton's open-shouldered way of addressing the ball, and his tendency to close his bat face.
To Rickelton, therefore, Bumrah didn't just deliver a slower ball that dipped onto an exquisite length. He also bowled it from over the wicket, so the angle, and the turn off a grippy Ahmedabad pitch, away from the left-hander, increased the chances of producing the leading edge.
Amid all the moving parts of T20, it's often incredibly difficult to separate the grain of a well-executed plan from the chaff of randomness. When Bumrah bowls, though, there's always a sense of deliberation, of cause and effect, whether he's doing the very thing you expect him to do, six balls in a row, or stunning you with a variation no one could have seen coming.
Except the poor batter really, really should have.