West Indies post-mortem

What a fine win in Jamaica! Sure, we were a much stronger team on paper, a0-0 result would be been a disappointment, and a series defeat would havebeen a disgrace ... but the West Indies are a tough team at home, we'vealways struggled abroad, and the resilience with which we struck through theseries, after the way in which we let our guard down against Pakistan andEngland, was most admirable. Some thoughts in reflection:

1. Openers: When our openers click, we are a good Test team. Period. We didwell in Australia and Pakistan in 03-04 because of Chopra and Sehwag; ourwonderful Headingley win owed everything to the start provided by Bangar and Sehwag; and similarly, Jaffer and Sehwag had much to do with our consistencyin this series. The big guns in the middle order need the cushion of these starts to function properly. Sehwag, clearly, is the common thread here,indicating his monumental importance to the side ... his loss of form against England really was a huge handicap. But I'm so pleased with the wayJaffer held up. He showed solidity and consistency, but also a class reminiscent of Laxman at his best. I really hope he is finally given his fair due, and am glad that he has already been offered a central contract.

2. We had 4 defining innings in this series, each of which signaled a particular moment of transition in the series writ large:

i. Jaffer's 212 at Antigua: A second innings double is always a big deal,but this heralded the moment when our batting found itself. Up till that point, we had been hammered in the one-dayers, and dismissed cheaply in the first innings. It was Jaffer who first stood up and pushed back, and thatprovided a batting momentum that carried strongly into the next two Test matches.

ii. Veeru's 100 at St. Lucia: A personal return to form which was welcome,but more to the point was the way in which he got it. By nearly getting his century before lunch, Veeru swung the momentum irrevocably India's way. If Jaffer's knock at Antigua was the back-to-the-wall effort that got Indiaback on its feet, then Veeru's knock took the next step of pushing the WestIndies to the ropes. It was a match-winning effort in every sense, and we would have won that Test with a day to spare if rain hadn't intervened so significantly.

iii. Laxman's 100 at St. Kitts: After narrowly missing victory twice, it would have been easy for India to be demoralized -- especially when then confronted with a 500+ West Indian first innings at St. Kitt's. It is in moments like these that Laxman truly shines. Under the cosh, with many people writing off his career, he fluorished at his favourite no. 3 positionwith a crucial 100, followed up in the second innings by an elegant 63 that opened up the possibility of an improbable 4th innings run chase. This is what Laxman is so good at -- he is mediocre against mediocre opposition, but when the chips are down, he is on par with Dravid as someone to turn to. Hopefully this will keep the critics at bay for a while.

iv. And then, the pinnacle of them, Dravid's 2 50s at Kingston. What can one say about those innings, on a pitch where the likes of Lara were completely shown up? Right up there with his other great knocks -- the 148 at Headingley, 180 at Calcutta, 233 at Adelaide, 270 at Rawalpindi. The key is that whenever Dravid plays a gem like this, India wins. If you look, in comparison, at Tendulkar's greatest innings, not one of them has come in a winning cause. So -- who is the greatest Indian batsman of all time?

3. Which brings me to the most interesting point of speculation, which is the place of Tendulkar in the scheme of things once he is fit. On the one hand, this series has shown without a doubt that we do not feel Sachin's absence in the Test team -- we have gotten along just fine without him here,while we struggled with him in the side against England. In any case, I hope it is clear to the selectors that he cannot be brought back in at the expense of Laxman, which was the costly mistake that was made against England. Yuvraj had a poor series, but the rest of his year has been so goodthat I think it would be criminal to drop him for Sachin. This means that if we play 5 bowlers, there is no place for Sachin; if we play 6 batsmen, thenthe last batting spot is effectively a shoot-out between Sachin and Kaif. Onthe one hand, I feel for Kaif -- he has played some crucial knocks in the chances that he has received, and I am very pleased that he managed his first Test 100. On the other hand, has he done enough to suggest that he can step into Sachin's shoes? I wonder. The biggest question for me is his vulnerability against the short ball, something that Jerome Taylor ruthlessly exposed. The likes of Makhaya Ntini would have taken note, and I wonder whether Kaif has the technical nous to survive on bouncy SouthAfrican wickets against what is now the quickest attack in world cricket. Onthat count alone, I am inclined to prefer Sachin (who, after Dravid, remains the best player of the short ball in Indian cricket today), though I think his days of batting at 4 are over.

4. Let's raise a toast again to that master, Anil Kumble. What more can one say about him, except ask the question -- again -- as to what genius is inspiring his continued exclusion from the one-day team????

5. Which means that the only unsettled question concerns our pace attack. It shone in parts, but really, this is far too inexperienced a pace attack to stand up to the rigours of Test cricket against quality batting. We got away here thanks to Kumble, but really, can this attack take on the Aussies, or even the South Africans? Of the 3 seamers on display, only Munaf Patel looks like the real thing -- he is fast, he is able to reverse the ball, and I really like his consistency of line. He bowled better than his figures ultimately suggest. Sreesanth? I don't know. He clearly has talent, and the ball that got Lara in the first innings at Kingston has to be the ball of the series. But he mixes it up with absolute rubbish. A long-term prospect, absolutely, but a Test spearhead, as he was called on to be in this series? Absolutely not. And Vikram Singh was just a waste. Sure, he has potential, but so do a lot of other youngsters. R.P.Singh showed far more potential in his debut games before being unceremoniously dumped -- all because Vikram is 10 kph quicker than R.P. Sure, he can bounce the ball, but is that really going to scare a SouthAfrican batting line-up that has grown up against fast bouncy bowling?There's much more to fast bowling than getting the ball to bounce. I think that the way Pathan was treated was sacrilege. He's going through a rough patch, but further eroding his confidence isn't the answer to that. He is the best swing bowler in India today, was winning matches for us just a few games ago, and batting well enough to play at no. 7, no questions asked.Why then has he been treated like this? Harbhajan Singh was far worse in Pakistan than Pathan was against England, yet he has been persisted with,and eventually the rhythm has come back. Why is Pathan not being treated inthe same manner as Bhajji, when he has at least as much talent, and far greater commitment and team ethic? I also think we missed a trick by not considering Agarkar or Zaheer Khan -- they're both notoriously unreliable,but Agarkar was really hitting the right lengths in the one-dayers, and Zaheer has been in scintillating form for Worcestershire. Importantly,they've seen it all before, and experience counts for a lot in Test matches. I hope they'll be back in the picture soon, because we need a more experienced seam attack than this if we are going to win in South Africa.

Thoughts?