The good, the bad and the ugly in West Indies

Harbhajan has been a mystery for the Windies

Ishant Sharma: Ishant picked up 22 wickets in 3 Tests, something rare for an Indian quick. In the process, the 22-year-old became one of the youngest players to pick up 100 wickets in Tests. His form augurs well for the England tour.
 
Praveen Kumar also impressed with 12 wickets. Zaheer Khan and S Sreesanth will make a comeback. On the whole, captain MS Dhoni has good bowling options to try out in England.

Dream Test Run: August 11, 2008. That's the last time India lost a Test series. With this win, we are closing in on the third anniversary of being undefeated in Tests.

We have won eight of our last eleven series. This run has included the top teams of Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka. We have also won two overseas tours: New Zealand and West Indies.

The bad...

Time may have been lost due to rain, but the worrying fact is that there was still enough time to shut out the opposition.

This has been a recurring issue. Take just West Indies in West Indies.

In 2006 in Antigua, we took 19 wickets as the last wicket pair defied us in the dying overs of the match to deny us a well-fought victory.

In the very next match in St Lucia we took 17 wickets as the tail fought to prevent an innings defeat for the Windies.

We took 17 wickets in the second match of the current 2011 tour too.

But what was worrying was the recently concluded third Test.

Both Kirk Edwards and S Chanderpaul scored centuries. While that is expected of batsmen, the inability of India to remove fast bowler Fidel Edwards proved to be India's undoing.

Fidel batted a whopping 37 overs to deny India enough overs to win the match. Here was a bowler with a Test batting average of less than 6 who defied Ishant, Praveen and Harbhajan Singh (who between them had picked up 45 wickets in the series).

In fact India’s bowling looked totally flat at that stage. It was another example of India’s inability to land the knockout punch, so vital for champion teams.

Had they even removed him within 30 overs we still might have had a result. It fell on part-timer Raina to remove the last two wickets.

India will have to do much better if they want to be like the world champion teams of West Indies and Australia of the past.

The ugly...

Umpiring: International umpiring has steadily been getting better and better. The ICC's elite panel of umpires have a very high accuracy rate.

So what happened in this series? Daryl Harper stood down after the first Test but that did not make any difference.

The number of glaring errors in the series could not even be counted on the fingers of one’s hands.

A conspiracy theory relating to India’s opposition of the DRS scheme was doing the rounds. Sadly, that seemed to be the only plausible explanation!

Sachincredible: Reliving Sachin's first international

Rain: It is a wonder that the first match had a result and the next two went so close despite the amount of rain in the series.

But there were times when the teams sat watching the rain in the first session and then had lunch under sunny skies!

The ICC should become more flexible about breaks. Things like rescheduling the lunch break and bringing down the duration from 40 minutes to 20 minutes during emergencies.

It might also be wise to do away with the tea break altogether when overs are lost. As it is, there are a number of drinks breaks throughout the day.


The author is a Bengaluru-based journalist and blogger.

He blogs at http://sunilrajguru.com/