Thursday, October 10, 2002 I think the West Indians must have had a really good team meeting after their shoddy performance yesterday. Viv Richards is their chairman of selectors now, and I don't know whether he had any inputs, but the effects were certainly Richardsesque.

They rectified many of their shortcomings though it might have come a little too late for them. To start with, you could actually see Merv Dillon put more into his bowling. Yesterday he was happy just to bowl line and length, but today he looked to bowl like a West Indian fast bowler.

Taking the new ball at the beginning of the day helped their cause because it meant that two seamers bowled in tandem. This is exactly what they should have done against Sachin Tendulkar last evening, but Carl Hooper was trying to conserve his fast bowlers.

A lot of the bowlers' good work was negated by, firstly, their own fielding. They have dropped four catches in this Test and those by Cameron Cuffy and Ryan Hinds were astonishing because of the lack of effort.

Then there was Rahul Dravid, who seems so relaxed when the opposition is a bit fired up. Defensive batsmen, as a rule, do feel more at home in situations where preservation of wickets is the most important task at hand. His appetite for runs has been quite amazing. Often batsmen in form give it away after a couple of good innings because they are satisfied with their achievements. Dravid has surpassed everybody's expectations – but perhaps still not his own. Three centuries and a double in successive innings at Test level is a tremendous feat.

VVS Laxman played well at a difficult time. But just when it seemed that he had done the hard work, he was gone. Though he keeps chipping in with important runs, it is proving quite hard for Laxman to make a mark because of the high quality that surrounds him. He will have realised today that to make people take notice, he will need to produce special performances more regularly.

Zaheer Khan was impressive when it was India's turn to field. He knew it was only a short session and so came out looking to bowl with pace and aggression. Being a left-armer, his rhythm was also helped by the fact that there were two left-hand batsmen to bowl at first up. Zaheer's ability to take an early wicket has been one of the most encouraging signs for Indian cricket recently.

There wasn't much evidence of turn in the evening, but there is cause for the Indian spinners to be optimistic. They are bowling with the SG ball, whose hard seam generally produces greater bounce. And Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh both have high-arm actions that can further exaggerate the bounce. Though the pitch is not unplayable, the batsmen will be under constant pressure tomorrow. There might be a big partnership which makes the spinners look ordinary, but when it is broken, it will be a whole new game.

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 talking to Rahul Bhattacharya.

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