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NEWS India-West Indies Series 2006>India should have won more convincingly in the West Indies 06th July 2006 11.02 IST By Manish Kumar The Indian team may have won their first Test series in the Caribbean in 35 years, but on paper India was so stronger than the West Indies, that a 1-0 scoreline looks far from convincing. Before the series began, India was the number two team in the world taking on a team ranked better only than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe .
India clearly lacked the arsenal in the bowling department to bowl out the West Indies twice in a Test. One fails to come to the conclusion as to what Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell were thinking when they picked S Sreesanth , Munaf Patel and Vikram Rajvir Singh , who collectively had not played more than five Test matches. Yes, the conditions and pitches were not suitable for bowlers and were tailor-made for the batsmen, but it was in these same conditions that recent teams have beaten the West Indies. And a stronger team like India should have done more or less the same. It is true that rain did rob India of a win in the second Test at St. Lucia, but the fact also remains that India could get nine wickets of a weak Test team in a whole day on that final day. A different bowling attack in that Test could have perhaps achieved that. Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan – the only two bowlers in the history of Indian cricket who have taken hat-tricks – were not played in all the matches of the series. Harbhajan was not selected to play in the first two Test matches and when he was selected to play in the third Test at St. Kitts, he picked up five wickets in the West Indian first innings. Not only that, Harbhajan again picked up five wickets in the fourth Test in Jamaica and when he went wicket less in the second innings, it was the veteran Anil Kumble , who ran through the West Indian line-up to script an Indian win. And not to forget that it was the batting of Dravid that bailed India out of trouble in both the innings. The fact that India slipped two positions in the ICC Test rankings justifies the fact that the win in the Caribbean is far from convincing. The next overseas tour India will undertake will be to South Africa in November and through the performance their we will come to know where exactly we stand in world cricket. Also View In-Depth Coverage: India-West Indies Series 2006 Team Page: India Team Page: West Indies | LIVE CRICKET COVERAGE NEWS ~ Gilchrist has no plans to retire after World Cup ~ Ganguly's new batting approach may cost him sixer record ~ India 'squash the Orange' in World Cup warm-up game ~ Symonds gets a new hairdo for World Cup ~ Dhoni readies himself for stand-up act at World Cup (more in NEWS) FACE-TO-FACE ~ 500-mark a possibility in World Cup: Hayden ~ Minnows add charm to World Cup: Dravid (more in FACE-TO-FACE) COLUMNS ~ Will Sri Lanka replicate 1996 World Cup success? (more in COLUMNS) OFF-THE-FIELD ~ Ganguly again the darling of corporate world ~ Ganguly roped in as brand ambassador of Puma (more in OFF-THE-FIELD) PLAYERS Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble (more PLAYERS) TEAMS India, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, West Indies, Zimbabwe, England, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Kenya, Holland | 
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