Friday, November 1, 2002 West Indies have shown exactly what the Indians could have achieved on a beautiful batting pitch. Virtually every one of the Indian batsmen got starts, yet the highest score was 77. Contrast this with West Indies, where four batsmen have gone on to make significant contributions already. It has made all the difference in the game so far.

I don't think too much fault can be found with the Indian spinners; it was the seamers who were really disappointing. It is all very well to say that there is no help from the surface, but that is no excuse for not trying to bowl quick. Javagal Srinath looked as if he is just running in to complete a formality. It was too reluctant an approach. I believe the selectors and the management missed a good opportunity to blood a youngster. Ajit Agarkar, who is in the squad, would certainly have tried harder than Srinath has done.

However, as Ashish Nehra showed, being younger doesn't always mean greater effort. Nehra hadn't done any bowling in this series, and should have looked to really make this opportunity count. Yet he held back most of the time, and never even came close to touching the 140kph mark, which he is capable of reaching.

When there is nothing in the pitch, that is the time you have to look to bowl quicker through the air. Ganguly was not giving the seamers long spells, so they should have gone all out and tried to get some reverse-swing going. In situations like this, I can't help but compare the Pakistanis with the Indians. The Pakistanis, on a surface like this, would have put in far more effort than the Indians did.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul was superb today. He has a gift for playing spin. He knows exactly how to handle the variations, and with Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble not finding much in the pitch, it was relatively easy work for him.

Marlon Samuels was the real revelation. On today's evidence it seems astounding that he was overlooked so far in the series, but I suppose it was only fair to give Ryan Hinds a run of two Tests. Samuels showed that he was a much better thinker. Hinds committed the same mistakes – playing across the line – several times, but Samuels seemed to have picked up many cues just by watching from the dressing-room. He looked to use the pad wherever necessary, and never hung out his bat out of sheer hope. There was some planning to his batting, besides which he has the basic talent. He has a fine international career ahead of him.

The best quality about the Chanderpaul-Samuels partnership was that they kept going. Never, even after passing milestones such as the 100-run mark, did their hunger flag. It is up to them to seize the initiative tomorrow. If they can extend the West Indian lead from 88 runs to about 170 or so, you never know how this match will end up.

Sanjay Manjrekar, the mainstay of India's batting in the late 1980s and early '90s, will be providing the Expert View on every day of this Test series. He was speaking to Dileep Premachandran. More Expert View
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