India frittered the advantage of wining the toss and found themselves precariously placed on 235 for 9 at close on day 1 in the first Test against the West Indies at St John's, Antigua, on Friday.
Looking for their first series triumph in the West Indies in 35 years, the Indian batsmen failed badly in negotiating the moving ball and were reduced to 72 for 3 by lunch, opening batsmen Wasim Jaffer (1) and Virender Sehwag (36) and VVS Laxman (29) all falling to regulation catches behind the wicket.
It was only a 54-run partnership for the fourth wicket between Yuvraj Singh and skipper Rahul Dravid that helped steady the innings.
Anil Kumble (21) and S Sreesanth (24 not out) then put on 47 runs for the eighth wicket to take India past the 200-run mark.
Medium pacer Dwayne Bravo was the pick of the West Indies bowlers, returning with figures of 4 for 37.
Morning session
The only good thing the Indians did on the opening day of the four Test series was winning the toss - and ensuring that a team, already battered by a 4-1 drubbing in the ODIs, didn't begin the second phase of the tour with a leather hunt.
There really is nothing in the Antigua track to scare batsmen: decent bounce yes, but even this early, the carry to the keeper suggests that it will settle down soon enough. Bowlers in fact are reduced to just the one trick - find the perfect length for each batsman, the one that inhibits strokeplay, then keep it there till kingdom come, amen.
The early dismissal of Wasim Jaffar was an exemplar. In the first over of the Test, Fidel Edwards went close to the wicket, pitched one on middle and off and seamed it away a touch late, squaring the batsman up and beating the edge. In his next over, Edwards merely altered the length a fraction, to get it fuller - and this time, the ball found the edge it had fractionally missed earlier (Jaffar 1/9; India 11/1).
At the other end, Virender Sehwag batted the way you wish he would in the shorter format of the game - and he was helped by an off line Ian Bradshaw. In his first over, the left arm seamer targeted middle and leg on the fuller length, and got flicked square, then through midwicket, for boundaries.
The real contest was always going to be Sehwag versus Edwards - and first chance he got, the bowler sent down a stream of bouncers, three in that 5th over. Sehwag responded in trademark fashion: the batsman rocked back into his crease to shorten length, stayed leg side to create width and square drove past point; aimed a drive on the up off the back foot and smeared the ball off the thick outer edge past third slip to the third man boundary, then took an attempted yorker, dipping into him, and swatted it through wide midwicket for the third four of the over (at that point, the opener was 24 off 20, without breaking a sweat).
Neither Bradshaw nor Edwards consistently found the good lengths and lines for this wicket. Bradshaw was the weaker link of the two, but Brian Lara opted to switch Edwards out first, in the 11th over, and brought Corey Colleymore on. Immediately, experience told: the first ball of Colleymore's first over was on perfect length, in the corridor around off; Sehwag pushed defensively on the walk, got the edge and Lara at second slip stayed low to hold well (36/37 with 7 fours; India 51/2).
The start was fluent enough, but the opener wasted it all on a track that, had he stayed in, would have allowed him to do pretty much anything he wanted.
VVS Laxman, coming in at three, took just a while to shake off rust - early on, there was an edge just wide of the slip cordon off Edwards, then a drive he was not in control of, and sliced wide of mid off.
As his innings progressed, though, the right handed stylist has gradually worked himself into something close to top form - a trademark square drive, front leg thrust well forward, going low on his knees to control the shot, was the moment of the morning, rivaled only by an effortless drive past Colleymore to the straight fence.
Rahul Dravid, coming a spot below his usual number three, walked out and set his stall out; his game early on in a Test innings is a test of just how many deliveries he can leave alone, and he stuck to it here, content to watch the bowlers through and leaving the job of run-scoring to Laxman.
Predictably, the character of the game changed - where the first 10 overs produced 51, the next 10 produced just 18; even this, thanks to Laxman rocking back, getting under a lifting delivery from Edwards in the 20th over and freeing his arms to power it over gully to the fence.
Just when it looked as if India would go in to lunch on a decent position, Laxman gave it away in a moment of indiscretion. Dwayne Bravo, the fourth of the seamers to be tried, bowled down the corridor; the batsman went for a loose drive without moving anywhere near the line, and got the outer edge through to the keeper (29/74; India 72/3).
Of the bowlers on view, Corey Colleymore has been the pick. The slowest of the four quicks, he compensates by bowling from very close to the stumps, and bowling the fuller length while varying his lines marginally to keep testing the batsmen down different lines. Bravo was the other bowler to impress in his brief spell; like Colleymore, he has stayed focused on the three quarter length around off, just occasionally bending the ball either way to question technique and concentration.
Interestingly - and likely through lessons learnt during the ODIs for Dravid both Colleymore and Bravo switch to the very full length on off, clearly fancying their chances of getting him LBW as he shapes to play off to leg.
Chris Gayle bowled the first over of spin in this Test (the 22nd of the innings) and, with a slip plus an interesting on side field of square leg and silly mid on, actually got the ball to turn and, with his height, bounce as well.
The trick for the bowlers on this pitch, which will likely become even easier to bat on in the second session, is patience - they will need to keep coming in, doing the same thing with metronomic precision and wear batsmen down, since there is no chance they are going to blast them out. The variable is reverse swing - if it happens, that is; the first indicators should come in the afternoon session with the older ball.
Lara helped his bowlers by keeping his field drawn up tight, focusing on saving singles and keeping the batsmen from getting easy runs the best possible game plan, in the circumstances.
The first session has clearly - and surprisingly - gone the way of the home side thanks largely to the indiscretion of the batsmen themselves. Both Sehwag and Laxman played loose shots after seeming well set; Jaffar was the only one who could claim to have been done by good bowling.
The three dismissals have more than negated the advantage of winning the toss. Where India should ideally have looked to play out the first session and dominate increasingly as the day wore on, they now face a back-to-the-wall fight; if they fail to make close to the 500 mark while denying the Windies the batting use of the second day pitch, they would have played right into Lara's hands - more so, since they are clearly a bowler short.
Post- Lunch session
For India, the second session was all about damage control as Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh settled down at their respective ends to watch paint dry.
The Windies seamers bowled tighter, more probing lines and lengths than they had in the first session. Brian Lara kept the field attacking and, more importantly, stacked the off field to shut the batsmen down.
The seamers succeeded in getting the ball to move about off the seam. To do this, though, they needed to be fullish in length - hard to do when Sehwag was attacking them, but considerably easier during this session with neither batsman really opening out and looking to knock them off length.
Both batsmen were becalmed for long periods, with runs difficult to come by. That sort of situation is Dravid's comfort zone - he stayed on the splice, making the bowlers come to him and straight-batting everything they hurled at him. For the most part, the quicks in particular looked for the very full length to Dravid on the stumps, apparently reckoning the LBW was their best, in fact only, chance of knocking him over.
At the other end, Yuvraj played a knock that was a curious mixture of opposites. There was uncertain footwork, pushes down the wrong line, and silly wafts at deliveries passing harmlessly by. One such, aimed at a Edwards delivery slanting across the left hander and played with no footwork whatsoever, saw the ball fly off the edge to third slip where Chanderpaul was deep in a post-lunch siesta (Yuvraj at the time 17/51; India 109/3).
Dave Mohammad's introduction (which came just after the drinks break) was a key moment in the session; if he could hit his straps immediately, it would give Lara attacking options at a time when the ball was beginning to get soft enough to take the edge off the quicks.
The young left arm spinner got drift, bounce and turn straight away. Yuvraj, who looked discommoded by the spinner, fell to a quicker, flatter delivery bowled with a lot of overspin, hitting line of middle and hurrying off the pitch on length to sneak through the batsman before he had his defense organized, and crash into off stump (23/67; India 126/4).
Mohammad Kaif walked out, and found himself surrounded by the keeper and three close catchers - on the first afternoon of a Test, on a pitch the Indian management thought fit to go in with a single spinner. And when facing Colleymore, Kaif had the benefit of an umbrella behind his back, with Lara using four slips, a gully and point standing well up to back his bowler.
To his credit, Kaif absorbed the pressure and when Colleymore in an effort to beat him for length served up a half volley, the batsman was quick onto it, easing it through the covers for a rare boundary, then followed it up by spanking Mohammad square when the left arm spinner dragged one down in a bid to skid it through.
70 runs came off 29 overs in the session for the loss of Yuvraj; on balance, you had to say that the West Indies won this one and continued to maintain its grip on the game thus far.
India is hampered by the knowledge that it does not have enough runs on the board - and outside of the two batsmen in the middle, only has Mahendra Dhoni to remedy that. Not a pleasant situation to be in, and that signals another session of attritive cricket to close out the day.
Post-Tea session
Having climbed on top over two gritty sessions, the West Indies put the boot in after tea.
There was nothing spectacular about the home team's efforts in the field and with the ball - just focused, head-down work, especially by the bowlers who came into the game knowing exactly what they needed to do on this track, and just did it, over after over, session after session, with remarkable discipline.
The tenor of the session was set by Dwayne Bravo, who in his opening two overs seemed overtly to target the Indian captain. Mixing his pace up, bowling the very full length tight on the stumps and just occasionally slipping the sucker ball in a bit wider, Bravo had seemingly set Rahul Dravid scrambling for survival.
It was Mohammad Kaif, though, who fell. Bravo from close to the stumps bowled a good outswinger at gentle pace; the batsman shaped to push through covers without quite getting his front foot across (notice how that is pretty much the theme of the day?); the ball moved marginally in after pitching and found the inner edge for another simple take by Denesh Ramdhin behind the stumps (155/5; 13/38).
A measure of Bravo's role in the bowling performance at that point is afforded by his analysis at the fall of Kaif: 10.3-6-10-2
Corey Colleymore was Bravo's accomplice through the day. The two rotated the bowling at one end among themselves a good bit of the time, each keeping the control going and maintaining the pressure created by the other. Here, he came on as Bravo's replacement and immediately did for Mahendra Singh Dhoni, with a ball on full length seaming away - the batsman pushed hard at it with bat in front of body and got the thick edge to Lara at second slip (19/27; 179/6).
At the other end, Rahul Dravid had all along batted with almost inhuman patience - doubly exemplary for the pressure he personally must have been under. After all, he had won the toss and opted to bat first, and from the morning, been at one end while he watched his colleagues crumble around him, negating the advantage he thought he had.
His vigil came to an end in one momentary lapse of concentration. Colleymore bowled one a touch short and wide of off stump; the batsman who throughout the day had sneered at far better scoring opportunities played at this one, looking to steer it to third man without getting his feet and body close enough to control the shot, and ended up playing it straight to Lara at second slip (49/173; 180/7).
An unfortunate adjunct to the dismissal was that the bowler had overstepped - Umpire Simon Taufel failed to spot the no ball.
The dismissal of the captain ironically produced the one period, after the first hour, when the bat held its own with the ball - and you had to thank the unlikely combination of Sreesanth and Kumble for that.
Thanks perhaps to his habit of winding them up, there is little love lost between Sreesanth and the opposition. The bowlers greeted him with some short stuff, that the tail ender countered with adequate technique; he then figured he wanted a bit of his own back and took the battle to the bowlers, swatting Edwards for successive fours through, then over, point.
Kumble at the other end helped things along in the way he knows best, defending to everything that was thrown at him and each time width offered, rocking back to play his bread and butter smash through point.
Predictably, when the batsmen went for the bowling, the lines and lengths frayed around the edges, and scoring opportunities opened up - underlining the fact that the reputed batsmen who had come earlier had played into the opposition's hands with the way they went about their innings.
The partnership had reached irritating proportions for the West Indies - 47 runs at a healthy 3.56 rpo; the second best of the innings after the 54 off 140 between Yuvraj Singh and Rahul Dravid - when Dwayne Bravo put all he had into a short ball with the second new ball. Kumble went on the back foot to defend and, to his evident chagrin, played it back onto his stumps (21/51; 227/8).
VRV Singh is not the kind of tail ender who inspires confidence with the bat; sure enough, he didn't last long, swatting a regulation short of length delivery from Bravo up in the air for a simple take by Sarwan jogging in from point (2/8; 231/9).
With Munaf Patel joining him, Sreesanth decided to go for broke, and the result was entertaining - swings, misses, near misses, much glaring between bowler and batsman, a smashing drive to sweeper cover, a blind swipe that put the ball high in the air only for Dave Mohammad at third man to spill a sitter off Edwards.
Stumps were drawn with the last wicket still standing and two of the regulation 90 overs yet to be bowled; the session produced 91 runs for five wickets in 32 overs.
Through the day, Lara handled his bowling and field in exemplary fashion, keeping the pressure always on the batsmen with tight set fields that choked them down and helped the bowlers create pressure.
The one blip was his overuse of Bradshaw. The left arm seamer looked off color from the first over that be bowled - yet, inexplicably, he ended up bowling more than any of his colleagues, despite giving away over one third of the total runs scored.
That aside, day one clearly belonged to the West Indies - the home team not only negated India's advantage with the toss, but ended up controlling the game through all three sessions.
Having thrown away the benefit of batting first, India's best - in fact only - chance of pulling it back is through an inspirational bowling performance on day two. The scary thought here is this: to accomplish that feet, it has to rely on a three man pace attack with a combined experience of three Tests.
