West Indies v India, 1st Test, Jamaica, June 20-24, 2011

Mishra needs the wickets or old man Munaf will come in next test.

WIndies going down with all hands.

If you subtract 100 from India's score then this is a really exciting test match.

vilkrang wrote:If you subtract 100 from India's score then this is a really exciting test match.

If you omit Sammy's dropped catch of Dravid and hold all else the same, WI would have won this - barely.

India is leading by 100 now, Dravid scored 110 more after being dropped by Sammy at 2.

Fast bowler bowling straight, not useless spinners in tandem. FFS, it's common sense.

Don't worry, I just flicked back over to the cricket. It will all be over soon.

There you go. Told you.

Raina takes the wicket. Pitches like these make me think of Kumble. He'd have destroyed line-ups much better than these.

1-0 though not all that convincing.

phew! i felt some bad karma kind of sh!t happening when bishoo and castro were doing it easy

dravid da man. nice to see him get some runs again

Closer than I thought it would be at the start of play today.

Also good to see old man Dravid score a century, we'll f**king murder the crabby bastard when he comes over here.

Well, yeah it was closer than most expected, but you know it wasn't close though. None of that 'game on' bullsh!t. The massive disappointment was the first three wickets. They needed a big partnership. After that it was absolutely no chance. On a high note for them, they've achieved their third highest score in eleven innings. But the fact is this Indian team should have been beaten. It's common that a constantly losing side cannot grasp these advantages.

As for India, the only real plus is that the seamers performed. You could say that the spinners underperformed really, given the conditions. As for the batsmen, Raina was good which is a plus as Yuvraj is still dodgy and they need a number 6. But, for future portents it doesn't look the best - not that they can't all improve - it doesn't look like they'll grow into the powerhouse of today.

Oh it wasn't close at all, but I expected Windies to be rolled over for less than 200.

I know it's not full strength but I'm not impressed at all with India. We really should be beating them this summer quite comfortably.

The change in personnel is incredibly stark. You're talking three batsmen and their best bowler. It's huge.

WI really are not that badly off, just can't seem to put it together. It's not like they're being thrashed out of sight recently, just need to make themselves harder to beat and cut out the really bad sessions they're used to.

Need to rid themselves of Simmons too.

It would be different with Gayle in the team, definitely, Barath seems like he can do the job as opener. Reckon he could have a weakness against the short ball though. The Windies aren't the worst as such, but their tendency to lose wicket in clumps are of the poorest standard.

Aye. It must be that maroon colour.

Brass Monkey wrote:The change in personnel is incredibly stark. You're talking three batsmen and their best bowler. It's huge.

Precisely.

Just to name 'em, we;re talking Sehwag, SRt, Zaheeer Khan, with Gambhir leading the rear.

furriner wrote:

Brass Monkey wrote:The change in personnel is incredibly stark. You're talking three batsmen and their best bowler. It's huge.

Precisely.

Just to name 'em, we;re talking Sehwag, SRt, Zaheeer Khan, with Gambhir leading the rear.

The equivalent would be to take Strauss, Pietersen, Anderson and Cook out of the England team. They all played the last time we were in the Windies and we still lost 1-0.

Yeah, a gigantic difference. That's the thing. It's not even India without that triumvirate, a wholly different prospect. It's sort of difficult seeing being able to take 20 cheap wickets, what with a couple of class battlers to go with the stroke-makers... then Toni and Bhajji in lower down. ZAK can bat. As Tremlett's asking for, our best chance it to bring some zing to the pitches,

Gary 111 wrote:
The equivalent would be to take Strauss, Pietersen, Anderson and Cook out of the England team. They all played the last time we were in the Windies and we still lost 1-0.

That's the sort of short-sighted comment I'd expect to see someone like Sean Custis write in The Sun. It was an entirely different situation. You've managed to wallop a bit of cod there...

Brass Monkey wrote:

Gary 111 wrote:
The equivalent would be to take Strauss, Pietersen, Anderson and Cook out of the England team. They all played the last time we were in the Windies and we still lost 1-0.

That's the sort of short-sighted comment I'd expect to see someone like Sean Custis write in The Sun. It was an entirely different situation. You've managed to wallop a bit of cod there...

It was England playing a Test in the Windies. Best comparison you could get.

But, England were weaker then and the Windies were stronger - Nash and Chanders were younger, Sarwan in fotm, Gayle in the team, Ramdin > Baugh and Jerome Taylor is just slightly more threatening than Darren Sammy.

But still, India are clearly going through the gears, and they still won. I wouldn;t read too much into this series....

Gary 111 wrote:
It was England playing a Test in the Windies. Best comparison you could get.

But, England were weaker then and the Windies were stronger - Nash and Chanders were younger, Sarwan in fotm, Gayle in the team, Ramdin > Baugh and Jerome Taylor is just slightly more threatening than Darren Sammy.

But still, India are clearly going through the gears, and they still won. I wouldn;t read too much into this series....

Well, I'd expect there's a few things to mention here. We'll start off with how we were still in the aftermath of the Moores/KP clusterf*ck, we were most likely a fractious and disjointed team. No doubts that many had their heads fully in the game and performed to the best of their ability. We were still having selection issues, with bowlers and batsmen.

It seems form has relevance to Sarwan but to f*ck all else. Cook's an entirely different prospect. As is Anderson. As is Swann, who was a fledgling. KP's pretty much as is. Strauss has worsened, granted. We didn't have Trott. We didn't really know how to win. We were always waiting around for Flintoff. It was a majorly transitional period.

They gunned us out one time, heavily, on the entire trip and the man that did was infinately more devastating than Sammy on his day - it's like comparing haddock to f*cking sea-bass. Taylor ripped us up on a zipper, because he got it right that day. Horribly right. The rest was played on featherbeds with a bowling attack that hadn't learned how to bowl on those types of pitches and we probably only lost the series because Strauss made an incredibly cautious declaration.

Continuing on the whole form thing, we haven't lost a series since then. The Windies won their first game in ages against Pakistan. Only to lose abjectly the next time around. They have, for the fourth mention, been bowled out for 268 or under 9 times in their last 11 innings. So, whilst they weren't pulling up trees before, they are now not even spraying weedkiller on patches of weeds.......

Apart from that, it's a decent comparison to draw.....

So Bravo and Chanders only last for 5 or 6 overs of the morning session. Shame that. Oh well.

You've always got your golden dildos to fall back on.