A timely hundred by Wasim Jaffer would have elicited smiles in the Indian dressing-room after a gap of several days. The Bombay opener had fallen cheaply in the first innings, and another early dismissal would have been disastrous, for let’s not forget, the selectors have picked only two openers with Dhoni expected to chip in if there is an emergency. Jaffer’s innings has ensured that the management won’t ‘experiment’ with the critical opening slot.
It was good to see debutant VRV Singh extract some lift out of the track and get his first two Test wickets. With India 130 runs in arrears, it was important that Sehwag and Jaffer gave the side a steady start. They did just that, although the think-tank and Sehwag himself ought to be worried at the way the Windies bowlers kept targeting the swashbuckler’s ribcage. It is no longer a secret that Sehwag is vulnerable to short-pitched deliveries that are angled into him. He has fallen to this type of delivery on several occasions in the recent past, and there seemed every possibility that the same would happen on day three of the ongoing Test. Fortunately for India, he didn’t. His cause was also helped by a hamstring pull that forced the nippy Fidel Edwards to leave the field.
Sehwag’s dismissal was followed by another Laxman innings that like many of his knocks, especially those played in the middle of 2001, promised a lot, but failed to deliver. He had scored 31 when he played an ugly stroke to give a simple catch to mid-on. The stage was set for the Indian skipper to bail his team out of a dicey spot. Jaffer, who like all quality batsmen, seems to have a lot of time to play his strokes, made Rahul Dravid’s task decidedly simpler. The opener completed his second Test hundred with an exquisite cover drive and fully deserved the applause he got. His ton at Nagpur was a match-saving effort, and should India finish with a lead of around 300, his Antigua hundred might well turn out to be a match-winning one.
The Indian bowling attack is inexperienced, save the slow bowlers Kumble and Sehwag, and the visitors do need a sizeable lead to bowl with. Most of the West Indies batsmen have played themselves into form, and if Chris Gayle gets going like he did in the first innings, the home team will fancy its chances of winning the game by tea on the last day. With Jaffer and Dravid in the middle and the likes of Yuvraj and Dhoni, not to mention Kaif who scored three fifties in the one-dayers, still to come, India will look to stretch their lead to 300 by tea on the third day. Did I say that ‘most’ of the Windies batsmen are in form? Yes, they are, but a certain Brian Charles Lara is yet to explode in this series. His record at the Recreation Ground is nothing short of phenomenal. He scored a world record 375 here in 1994 and reclaimed the record with a quadruple hundred exactly a decade later. The ongoing Test is the Recreation Ground’s last, with a new cricket stadium named after Antigua’s favourite son, Vivian Richards, coming up a few miles away. Lara, throughout his remarkable career, has displayed a ‘sense of the occasion’. Wouldn’t he like to bid farewell to one of his favourite grounds with another monumental, match-winning effort?
I suspect we all know the answer to this question.
