By Ashish Shukla
Bad weather combined with persistence of Marlon Samuels and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to frustrate India as the West Indies reached 98 for five on the rain-hit second day of the second Test.
Published: Jun 29, 2011, 08:20 PM (IST)
Edited: Jun 29, 2011, 08:20 PM (IST)
Ground staff put covers on the field after rain stopped second day’s play in Barbados © AFP
By Ashish Shukla
Bridgetown (Barbados): Jun 29, 2011
Bad weather combined with persistence of Marlon Samuels and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to frustrate India as the West Indies reached 98 for five on the rain-hit second day of the second Test.
Indian paceman Ishant Sharma struck twice in three balls to reduce the West Indies to 57 for five in the curtailed morning session after the hosts resumed at an uncomfortable 30 for three.
However, several rain interruptions and some sensible batting by Samuels (21) and Chanderpaul (20) gave India no chance to make further in-roads into the hosts’ batting line up.
The two batsmen added 41 runs for the unconquered sixth wicket and batted together for 19.3 overs on a day when only 25.3 overs of play was possible on the day.
The tenor of the day was set early when a shower delayed the start of the game by 45 minutes. There was another break of half an hour after lunch but the resumption lasted no more than eight-odd overs.
Heavy rains lashed Kensington Oval in the second session which forced umpire to enforce an early tea in the hope of squeezing as much play as possible in the final session.
That opportunity never arrived. Even though it stopped raining after a while, early tea was taken and players even came out in the final session. It began raining almost immediately for players to go to pavilion. Thereafter it was poor light which never allowed the game to resume.
The most play possible was in the morning session as West Indies retired for lunch at 82 for five from 29 overs.
Both the overnight batsmen, Ramnaresh Sarwan (18) and Devendra Bishoo (13), fell prey to Ishant’s bounce with the paceman bowling a spell of 6-2-23-2 in the morning.
Praveen Kumar and Ishant held the two ends up for all but the final 10 minutes and three overs of the shortened session.
Despite the precision and pace of Indian bowlers, both Sarwan and Bishoo stood their ground for the initial half an hour’s play.
Sarwan survived a couple of shouts and Bishoo once edged Ishant between the third and fourth slip but importantly West Indies hadn’t lost a wicket.
Bishoo’s propensity to fiddle with every delivery outside off-stump made Mahendra Singh Dhoni strengthen the off-side field, once to the extent that he had all of his nine fielders manning the side of the stumps.
Bishoo finally perished when he was drawn like a moth to a flame to a rising delivery and Virat Kohli at gully caught the chance easily. A delivery later Ishant struck again, this time Sarwan falling to a delivery which kept cruelly low and found him in front of his stumps.
Sarwan is now without a half century in his last 12 Test innings.
Brief Scores: India 201 all out (VVS Laxman 85, Suresh Raina 53; Ravi Rampaul 3 for 38, Devendra Bishoo 3 for 46, Fidel Edwards 3 for 56) lead West Indies 98 for 5 (Marlon Samuels 21*, Shivnarine Chanderpaul 20*; Ishant Sharma 3 for 31, Abhimanyu Mithun 1 for 18) by 103 runs.
© PTI
