Saturday, November 2, 2002 This was a gripping day of cricket. There was some sweating on the pitch in the morning because it had been under covers and, since the sun was not out as it had been on the first three days, there was more help for the spinners. The turn was sharper and both Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh were able to extract more bite than on the previous days.

The slide, strangely, was started by Virender Sehwag because of an ordinary shot played by Shivnarine Chanderpaul. The Indians gratefully accepted that slice of luck and pressed on. Still, West Indies managed a sizeable lead, which meant that they would come out all charged up. The first over from Merv Dillon was fantastic. The delivery that removed Sanjay Bangar would have accounted for many greater batsman.

More creditable, though, was the manner in which Virender Sehwag was trapped. I assumed they would follow their first-innings strategy: bowl outside off stump on short of a length, put the third man in place, and wait for an indiscretion. But they had worked out Plan B as well and they put it in place as soon as Sehwag hit a couple of boundaries, which I thought was too early. But it turned out to be a master stroke.

Carl Hooper put a leg slip in place and Dillon tucked up Sehwag with a short ball. Sehwag will have to make sure that this doesn't become a regular mode of dismissal because the word will undoubtedly spread. All in all, that first session was excellent Test cricket.

Thereafter, Tendulkar held sway. The most striking thing of his innings was that he looked to hit shots in front of the wicket. There were not too many paddle sweeps or glides to third man. He also looked to play those forcing shots off the back foot into the covers, which used to be a great source of runs for him in his earlier days.

Another notable feature of Tendulkar's innings was that the run-flow never fell away. In many of his recent innings we have seen that he tends to slow down in patches. Today he maintained the tempo and ended with a strike rate of almost 60, which is very good indeed.

I really felt for Rahul Dravid, though, who got his second bad lbw decision of the match. It just the way the game goes sometimes. Two weeks back he achieved a rare feat of scoring four Test hundreds in a row, and suddenly he has three successive failures.

I think unless Laxman and Tendulkar bat out the first session, West Indies still have an excellent chance of winning. If they do manage a couple of early wickets, they will need to chase 120 or so. I am certain they can manage that many.

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 Rahul Bhattacharya. More Expert View
Day 1
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