It is a common complaint that West Indies fast bowling is not as aggressive as it used to be. But how can it? With these bowlers, on a pitch like this, aggression is futile. If you don't have genuine pace, there is no point in bowling short-pitched balls. If the West Indian pacers playing in this Test keep bowling short, they will inspire laughter, not terror. It is ridiculous to bowl bouncers on a dead pitch at 82mph. The West Indian pacers bowled short quite a lot in this Indian innings, particularly Mervyn Dillon and Cameron Cuffy. But most of the batsmen, with the exception of Anil Kumble who took his eyes off the ball and got hit, just swayed out of the way or were able to play their shots. They had enough time. It was a pointless and wasted effort.

At the 90mph-plus pace that the West Indian bowlers of the 1980s bowled, for instance, short-pitched bowling inspired fear in batsmen. You did not even have to look for fear in their eyes. At that pace, batsmen know they could get seriously hurt and that thought was enough to intimidate them. That made the bowler's task so much easier.

Today became progressively harder for West Indies, but it cannot be said that they gave up trying. There was not much that Carl Hooper could have done differently to separate VVS Laxman and Ajay Ratra. Maybe the odd fielder could have been placed in a better position, but apart from that there was little hope on this flat pitch.

Hooper made his mistake yesterday, going into the Test with four fast bowlers. Perhaps he was misguided and given the impression that this pitch would help the quick men. Now, West Indies is paying the price for not selecting Dinanath Ramnarine. Had they selected him, Hooper would probably have opted to bat first, and this would have been a completely different game of cricket.

For much of the day, India were scoring so slowly - at a pedestrian rate of around two-an-over - that West Indies did not even feel the need to go on the defensive. Of course, in the last session, with both batsmen well set and the bowlers tiring, runs came more quickly and Hooper had to go on the defensive. That was natural. Some slow days cricket of cricket can be engrossing. But the play today did not make me jump up and cheer.

Michael Holding, a key member of the West Indies pace quartet of the 1970s and '80s, will be contributing the Wisden Verdict for all the Tests in this series. He was talking to Raja M.

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