The most striking aspect of the day's play was India's bowling in the first innings, which restricted West Indies to 150-odd. Sourav Ganguly made a bold and unusual decision in the morning. Nine out of 10 captains would have opted to begin with a seamer and spinner: the ball was just 14 overs old and the conditions were a touch overcast. Besides, if at all there was going to be help at all for the seamers, it would have been in the morning. Zaheer Khan would have been the natural choice.

Yet Ganguly started with Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. Then he brought on Javagal Srinath ahead of Zaheer Khan as the first change. Ganguly's style of captaincy is such: he is very convinced about what he has to do and there are no half measures. It can sometimes be his weakness but it is also his great strength. Today, he was simply using his bowlers depending on who was at the crease – and virtually every move worked.

Ganguly's best trick of the day was trapping Carl Hooper on the hook. The one refreshing change we have seen under Ganguly is the team's aggression in the field. India have been at the receiving end of hostile bowling for the best part of their cricket history. But, with some pace at his disposal now, Ganguly is keen to give it back to the opposition.

Zaheer Khan was the pick of the bowlers. It was his extra zip that troubled the batsmen. Every time he dropped his pace, he looked ineffective. If he studies today's bowling carefully, he will find that he looked ordinary only when he let his pace drop from the mid-late 130s to the late 120s.

Harbhajan is the bowler who has disappointed in this Test. He has been limited - happy to hit a good length and hope that the batsman will pop it to silly point or short leg. Occasionally, you can see him trying to pitch it further up, inviting the batsman to drive, but the experiment doesn't last long. By the third or fourth ball of the over he is dragging his length back.

It is crucial that he works this out or else he will succeed only on surfaces where batsmen are troubled by good-length deliveries. This Test was a great opportunity for Harbhajan because of the ordinary batting line-up he was up against.

In their second outing, the West Indian batsmen learned from their mistakes in the first innings, just as the bowlers had on Day Two. They were far more aggressive. Although they must have been zero on confidence, the openers, Wavell Hinds and Chris Gayle, decided that they would let their Caribbean instincts loose. It worked for a while, but sooner or later a batsman is bound to lose his wicket if he is only looking to attack. At least it gave them some sort of a start.

Now a loss for West Indies is inescapable. A loss by an innings is very likely. And Ganguly knows that he doesn't need to rely solely upon the spinners to get the wickets – there are Zaheer and Javagal Srinath too.

Sanjay Manjrekar, the mainstay of India's batting in the late 80s and early 90s, will be providing the Expert View on every day of this Test series.

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