Funny things happen after a good night's sleep. Yesterday the pitch at the Wankhede was slow and stopping but still playable. The night turned it into a dusty trampoline with dubious springs. The spinners could no longer be negotiated, and they took every wicket in the second innings.

Harbhajan Singh used not just the surface, but even the air, better than he has in less-confident times. Chris Gayle was brought forward to make a leading edge; Carl Hooper was sucked into the cover-drive that yo-yoed back to the bowler; lesser batsmen fiddled about with no belief. Harbhajan was feeling it, and his energy buzzed around the stadium.

All the while close fielders and a cheery crowd under the clouds added to the spice. In such scenes Anil Kumble will find his range and never let go. His front-of-the-hand stuff will slide on; anything from the side or the back will detonate on the pitch and fly high. Ramnaresh Sarwan was in danger of having his ears sliced off. The bombs they kept-a-dropping.

There was tension in the air and West Indies don't handle that well. Some sweated before falling; others couldn't be bothered. Shivnarine Chanderpaul showed diligence but West Indies needed four more like him. The end today was inevitable and it came at one o'clock sharp. Uncle Lester, West Indies' roving supporter since the 1950s, had wept when his team lost in two days at Headingley in what was his 100th Test. Now he sat numb in the West Stand and watched the fallen fall further.

Today's play was cricket like it had been in India from the early '90s, and that must be said with some embarrassment. The board's insistence in relaying a wonderful pitch for the sake of uniformity proved to be too stubborn.

Stubbornness gave way to desperation. The match was brought forward by three weeks to honour Sachin Tendulkar, in not his 100th but his 101st Test. That ate into some preparation time. Then, the original strip marked for the match was abandoned a fortnight before the new date. What emerged was underdone and that was a backward step for Indian cricket. India's great challenge will be to bowl out sides twice on true surfaces, as they did against Australia in early 2001.

Still, good things have emerged for India. Zaheer Khan took further strides forward, showing himself to be a threat not just in the first blast with a shiny ball, but also in his second or third efforts. His spell after lunch yesterday, Sourav Ganguly said, turned the game.

The batting showed commitment. Virender Sehwag was able to give a session to the opposition and subsequently cash in. Rahul Dravid did not capture the imagination but singularly showed the application that the opponents could not collectively manage. Sanjay Bangar bowled useful bouncers and followed them up with glares.

Whatever the surface, a team must play good cricket - and India did. They had never before beaten West Indies by an innings but now they have. This was Ganguly's 12th win as captain. By the end of the series it is plausible that he will win two more and equal Mohammad Azharuddin as India's most successful Test captain of them all.

Rahul Bhattacharya is assistant editor of Wisden.com in India.

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