India v West Indies, 2nd Test, Chennai, Day 2
Friday, October 18, 2002

It was a welcome change finally to see some inspired performances from the West Indians. After the batsmen gave another shocking display yesterday, the bowlers did enough today to keep things interesting.

They were helped in that regard by the SG ball used in this series. The nature of the surfaces we've seen so far has been to aid turn and bounce, encouraging both spinners and quick bowlers. But it's the ball, with its very prominent seam, that is the bowlers' best friend. For the spinners, any over-spin is exaggerated, and the seamers find it much easier to grip, and easier to move off the pitch. After the 30th over today, Mervyn Dillon and Jermaine Lawson got some pronounced lateral movement, though they deserve credit for making the most of conditions that had altered slightly as a result of overnight rain.

Virender Sehwag played another crucial innings for India up front, but apart from that, the batting left a lot to be desired. There is plenty of time left in this match and I can understand them not going full pelt - but the approach in the latter part of the day was quite negative. India should be looking to do more than win this match, they should be looking to set very high standards. This didn't seem like a team that had won the first Test inside four days, a team eager to drive home their dominance.

Sanjay Bangar is trying to make the most of his opportunities as an opener, but you wonder if his approach helps the team cause. He does try to play some shots, but more often than not they don't come off. Rahul Dravid was unlucky, out to perhaps the best ball of the day, but it was Sachin Tendulkar's batting that was the most striking feature of the day. And not for the right reasons.

I've watched him since he was 15, and these days I get the impression that he is just not batting to the best of his ability. Even Ramakant Achrekar – his childhood coach – said recently that his batting had become tinged with excessive caution. Every batsman goes through phases in his career, and there will come a stage when a lot of the initial exuberance and devil-may-care approach vanishes. But in Tendulkar's case, the game he has adopted now is most unnatural. It's almost as if a genius is trying to bat like a good Test batsman, and that disappoints and frustrates me, and many others.

West Indies will to bed tonight – for the first time in the series – with faint hope in their hearts. If they can run through the Indian tail early tomorrow, with the help of the second new ball, it could set up an intriguing finish. Chasing a target in the fourth innings here won't be a picnic.

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 Dileep Premachandran.

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