The euphoria of Port-of-Spain felt like it was from another age. India were stunned by the loss of Shiv Sunder Das off the first ball today, and they were left dazed by the time the innings ended at 4.21pm: 102 runs; 33.4 overs. Miserable.

India's task was cut out from the moment Carl Hooper won the toss and inserted them with four fast bowlers in his line-up. The same tactic hadn't quite come off at Port-of-Spain, but as Hooper said yesterday, three seamers and a spinner hadn't worked for even longer - 18 months now. On what is believed to be the second quickest pitch in the Caribbean nowadays, the risk was worth taking.

And the moment there is bounce in the surface, the knees of the average, even above-average, Indian go all weak. Their last seven Tests have all come on placid surfaces; some like Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Guyana, have been almost sinfully benign. This Kensington pitch has been the first encounter of anything remotely threatening this series. Local boy and rebel tour cricketer Franklyn Stephenson thinks it's the fastest Barbados pitch for years now. Sure enough, India fell.

But really, it was a collapse not sparked by anything more than a general diffidence on a slightly difficult wicket. Das didn't know whether to go forward or back - the pressure is on him more than ever to produce a big one when not playing against Zimbabwe at Nagpur. Wasim Jaffer, too, was stuck on the crease and paid the price.

Sachin Tendulkar was a victim of early tentativeness. Batsmen, very good batsmen too, like to feel it in the middle early on, and so he followed Pedro Collins's outseamer and got a nick. The heat was on.

The pressure showed more than ever when Sourav Ganguly ran out Rahul Dravid - not for the first time. A tap, a call, and a run that was always on was eventually turned down by Ganguly, the striker. It had happened against Australia at Mumbai last year, and it has happened on several occasions in one-day cricket. Dravid, India's best batsman of the tour, was gone, and they lost their next best, VVS Laxman, with only one run more to their total. Again, not for the first time in his career, Laxman was bowled through the gate. It was reminiscent of Andy Flintoff going through him at Bangalore late last year. India could have done without all this deja vu.

Ganguly had compounded India's already miserable situation with that run-out, but at least he scored some runs. It even resulted in one spectacular period of two balls. With eight wickets down, Ganguly was beaten by Mervyn Dillon. His response was to step out and smear him through extra cover, and then dance down again and hoist him to the roof of the Pickwick Pavilion at long-off. It was an infinitesimally minute moment of brightness for India on a rainy and bouncy day.

Then there was the matter of the continuing lack of any contribution from the tail. Yes, the keeper's job is to keep, the bowlers' job is to bowl, but runs from below never hurt any cricket team. In the last three innings now, the tail has contributed a total of 48 runs, which works out to an average of 3.43 per tailender.

It remains to be seen whether India can and will use the bounce in the pitch like the West Indies did. On the brief play possible this evening, it didn't appear so. They need rain or something extraordinary to bail them out of this one.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com India. His reports will appear here throughout the Test series.

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