After what had been an excellent Test for him personally, Sourav Ganguly expressed the belief that a little support from the Indian lower order could have made a significant impact on the match.

"It happens, the first morning of a Test match you get a few good balls. You lose a couple of wickets and you're struggling. We did not get enough contribution from the lower order, which is a problem area." India had slumped to 102 all out on the first day, and eventually lost the match by ten wickets. Apart from Zaheer Khan, who made 46 in the second innings, nobody from India's bottom five had made a reasonable score in this match. The story in Port-of-Spain had been even worse.

Though Ganguly thought this Kensington pitch to be "much harder than the one we played on last time", he would have batted first had he won the toss. "I would have known that the ball will do a bit for the first one hour but if we could have gone through that West Indies would have had to bat fourth which would not have been very easy."

Another key point, Ganguly believed, was the Carl Hooper's near run-out, which was adjudged not out by the third umpire Billy Doctrove. Most of those who saw the replays disagreed. "A few other things happened in the game, which I don't want to mention, that could have put us back on course. But those things happen in cricket." Hooper was on 15 at that time; he added precisely hundred more.

Coach John Wright felt it was shot selection that had let India down. "At the end of the day it is the biggest issue we have… there's self-discipline required in the shot you hit in the middle, we do talk about it and it is disappointing when you do see the same mistakes made on occasions.

"One of the things needed to in this Test match was more runs from our tail. It didn't eventuate, but to be honest you've got to expect your frontline batsmen to put them in a position from where it is a little easier than it was for them on the first day."

Ganguly was also asked about Sachin Tendulkar's failure in the Test. "He is human. Tendulkar does great things for India, I'm sure there's another 100 coming in Antigua. He can have a bad game too."

One West Indian journalist even asked whether "Tendulkar is scared of fast bowling on fast pitches." At the end of the press-conference, a visibly riled Ganguly told the journalist, "You got guts, man. You got guts."

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

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