The flurry of wickets in West Indies' second innings was just reward for some disciplined bowling from the Indian seamers. They had looked flat in the first innings, but were on the ball in the second, keeping it in the corridor and denying the batsmen easy scoring opportunities. In the afternoon session, when West Indies slumped to 65 for 4, the Indian trio of seamers kept an impressive 90% of their deliveries on middle stump or further off side. For the entire West Indian innings so far, that figure was only marginally lower, at 85%.

Their length with the new ball was good too – out of 108 balls bowled by the seamers in the second session, only seven were half volleys, which the West Indian batsmen picked off for 21 runs. They were on a good length 55% of the time, while 31% of their deliveries were short.

Javagal Srinath picked up two early wickets with the new ball, and it wasn't difficult to see why – he induced a not-in-control figure of 24%. That is, once every four balls, batsmen played-and-missed, edged, or were rapped on the pads when playing him. In the first innings, and in the Antigua Test, it had hovered around 15-18%. Zaheer Khan was up there too, with 23%. Ashish Nehra was less threatening, with a not-in-control figure of 18%. Not surprisingly, he picked just one out of seven wickets to fall.

S Rajesh is sub editor of Wisden.com in India.

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