The cosmic clock has no time for those incapable of change, those condemned to live out their lives in a time warp. Watching West Indies bat today was a Time Machine ride into the Stone Age of Test cricket. A magnificent Australian side has revolutionised the way the game is played, and progressive nations like India have tried to follow suit. But West Indies are ageing dinosaurs, deserving of a dart that puts them out of their misery. If what they have learnt, or not, in the last five years was the criterion, the less-charitable might say the dunce cap fitted better than the maroon one.

Their approach to batsmanship this morning illustrated once again the wretched condition of cricket's erstwhile aristocrats. Winning the toss gave them the best possible platform to fight their way back into the series, but they responded with batting that was as timid as it was boring to watch. Those who once rooted for the calypso kings were left searching for seats under which to hide.

Taking the shine off the new ball is a wise tactic at Headingley, where there's plenty of encouragement for the quick bowlers. But on a surface like this, with Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh itching to come on, it was akin to digging yourself into quicksand.

A few runs early on might have given the openers some confidence to take to the spinners, but instead they trod water for an hour. When Harbhajan came on, Chris Gayle lost his head, laying waste the exercise in denial that had gone before.

It staggers the mind how some teams have yet to realise that it takes runs on the board to win, or even save, matches. Strokeless occupation of the crease is fine while fighting for survival on a vicious last-day pitch. But on an opening-day track with few demons, it's a shameless admission of inadequacy.

The odd delivery did zing through off a length, and there was occasional sharp turn at times, but nothing that a Test cricketer shouldn't be able to negotiate. Ramnaresh Sarwan showed the way to play against Harbhajan and Kumble, blocking the good deliveries and putting away the bad ones.

Unfortunately for West Indies, the gap between his bat and pad was as wide as the Straits of Hormuz when Javagal Srinath came back for a probing second spell after lunch. One of these days Sarwan might actually play a big innings. Until then, we hacks are condemned to use words like cameo and its synonyms.

Carl Hooper shone like the afternoon sun during his brief innings, going at a canter where his team-mates had struggled to even crawl. You hoped he would paint a masterpiece, but one ugly brushstroke later, he was gone. If wasting one's talent was a crime, he would be breaking boulders on some penal colony – with a career graph that accurately mirrors the decline and fall of an empire.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul batted yet again as if he was playing in the Timeless Test at Durban in 1938-39, taking 150 minutes over his 27. In three innings, he has occupied the crease for 535 minutes and 117 runs. Seldom has one man done so much for so little. Some say he's the anchor they can't do without, but what use is one to a marooned ship crying out for an engine or two?

India did just enough today and, in fairness, that's all they had to against opponents who lay on the floor and begged for the boot. When the situation demanded a combination of flair and caution, West Indies delivered large dollops of mediocrity, leaving the crowd to entertain themselves by banging plastic bottles on seats.

If anyone tells you that that's how things were in the "good old days", give them short shrift. Boring, unimaginative cricket will never be anything more than that, whichever era it's played in.

Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Wisden.com in India.

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