Near the end of the first session, West Indies head coach Darren Sammy made a facepalm. He had enough reasons to do it. With the lunch break minutes away, Shai Hope, the middle-order batsman who was supposed to form the backbone of this fragile West Indies batting line-up, went for an expansive drive through the large vacant cover area which Kuldeep Yadav had left intentionally untenanted. It is the age-old trap that Indian spinners lay for most visiting batsmen and one that the world-class ones resist. Hope, though, doesn’t fit into that class, and as soon as he saw this flighted delivery, chose to free his arms, unaware of what the drift was going to do to him. Once he had committed to that shot, there were just two possibilities: one was to connect, and another was what followed. It dipped on him further than he anticipated, and the sharp turn castled the woodwork behind as Kuldeep, having waited nearly a year for a Test, bowled a perfect delivery to get off the mark. At the dressing room’s viewing area, Sammy’s gesture captured not just his but that of the watching public. Having chosen to bat first on a pitch with a bit of grass on it – because they didn’t want to bat last – West Indies needed to be compact and show the necessary application to survive against a strong Indian attack with six bowling options. But none of it arrived as the Indian pace duo of Mohammed Siraj (14-3-40-4) and Jasprit Bumrah (14-3-42-3) made inroads each time they had the ball in their hands as West Indies folded for 162 in 44.1 overs in front of a sparse crowd at Ahmedabad. If ICC Chair Jay Shah ever needed a more compelling reason to formulate a central fund to improve the health of Test cricket outside the Big Three, he found plenty of them in his hometown. Having lost their best talents in the past to franchise T20 leagues, West Indies cricket finds itself in a place where their best players are turning their backs even for white-ball cricket, with Nicholas Pooran being the recent case in point. Flicker of sunshine before darkness again for WI In Test cricket, they have had the odd, sensational win in England, Australia and Pakistan, but those wins have been followed by the team sinking to new depths. In their last Test, they had crashed to 27 all-out against Australia at Jamaica. Having a dedicated fund to improve their Test cricket before the next Future Tours Programme comes into place after 2027 would do them a world of good, as the West Indies talent drain was to the forefront here on Thursday. In this week alone, apart from the senior side that is in action here, India’s A team is in action against Australia A. A Rest of India team is playing the Irani Cup and the Under-19 team is Down Under on a month-long tour. This steady supply line of players is what has made India hopeful of coming through their biggest transition in more than a decade unscathed. With the West Indies, it is as alarming as ever without any of these exposure tours that bridge the gap between first-class cricket and Test cricket. Enough has been said about their fall from the top, but even during their recent years of struggle, they had the odd batsman who put his hand up and kept them in the game. But the current batting unit doesn’t inspire much. They have a total of nine Test centuries, with two of their top three yet to reach three-figures in Tests. Siraj stutters before finding his mojo In the first session, in particular in the first 30 minutes, where both Bumrah and Siraj struggled to get their line right as they strayed down the leg repeatedly, all it took for the pacers was to deliver one ball in the right area. For the first wicket, Siraj wasn’t even required to do that as Tagenarine Chanderpaul edged one down the leg-side where Dhruv Jurel, who was exceptional behind the stumps, caught it with his right hand. Next, it was Bumrah’s turn to get off the mark with one that angled into the left-handed John Campbell and straightened just enough to find the edge and settle into Jurel’s hands. Brandon King muscled three boundaries in his 15-ball stay before totally misreading the line and shouldering arms to a Siraj delivery that pitched on off-stump channel. Two overs later, Siraj – who bowled 90% of his deliveries in the first session in a good and full length – was rewarded again when he went over the wicket and got one to slant across Alick Athanaze, who nicked it to KL Rahul in the cordon that brought Hope and Chase together. For West Indies to post a total that would keep them in the game, a lot was riding on their two experienced pair when Hope played that shot off Kuldeep to end the 48-run stand that was the highest of their innings. Siraj, in the third over after lunch, worked around Chase with another simple plan. Having got four successive ones to move in, he made the fifth one to seam slightly away, which was enough for the Windies captain to edge it to Jurel. Thereafter, two yorkers from Bumrah, that would make the Reels, and one each for Washington Sundar and Kuldeep put an end to West Indies misery.
