A wakeup call for India

With their convincing series win over India, a transformed West Indies side keep the suspense well chilled for the World Cup in the Caribbean next year. As for the Indians, despite 17 wins in 24 games prior to this series, claims about a one-day resurgence seem to be a case of hyping things before they are fully hatched.

A 3-2 defeat is much better than 4-1 and despite acquiring a formidable reputation in recent times as being adept at the chase, the Indian team in the final game at the Queen's Park Oval could not clearly exceed the sum of its parts. There were exceptional displays, notably Virender Sehwag both with bat and ball, yet the sloppy ground fielding, the extras conceded as much as the top-order wobble were symptomatic of a side shoveling against the tide, a collective paralysis of will.

Yet, it is not as though things went drastically wrong for the visitors as four defeats on a trot would seem to suggest. Except, perhaps, for the fourth one-dayer where they clearly lost their way - scoring just 21 runs between the 39th and 45th over - the series was mostly nip and tuck, with the first three matches going to the wire. No player failed consistently or spectacularly, even those who let themselves down in one match as they more than made up in the next. Similarly, on each occasion different players put their hands up when key performers failed to join the party.

Moreover, initially at least, underestimating the opposition, not enough acclimatization - given how "fast and thick" one-day matches come - and the relative inexperience of the side might have exonerated the Indians. But considering their one-day ambitions course correction was only to be expected once reality intruded which, due credit to them, was promptly undertaken.

What, in the event, went wrong was something more fundamental. Experimentation and flexibility are buzzwords with the coach Greg Chappell and the rest of the Indian think tank, who rationalise it by citing the need to build up bench strength and proper synergies for the upcoming World Cup. However, is this flexibility, at least sometimes, simply a disguise for indecision and ad hoc-ism? In the last game, India included one more batsman at the cost of a bowler after going with five specialist bowlers for all the previous games. The result: West Indies, incidentally playing with a depleted team, got their highest score in the series and every one of the Indian batsmen except Sehwag scored less than thirty!

India of course needed to win the game if only for morale reasons and therefore, desperation and a defensive mindset, not flexibility, prevailed. Paradoxically, at the tactical level, they tried to be flexible when the situation warranted a tried-and-tested approach, of safe and conservative options. By bringing in Mahendra Singh Dhoni at No.3 when an opener was lost very early in the game, when the target was far from insurmountable and when they had somebody like Rahul Dravid who could easily be there for the long haul, India lost out on the option of having a safety net during the slog. As luck would have it, that is what exactly happened.

From the start of the series there was one more major failing. The Indians failed to take into account their own reputation. While the whitewash against Zimbabwe provided a soft punching bag for their frustrations - especially with the thrashing at home by both South Africa and Pakistan still wet on the hoardings - West Indies had no illusions about the quality side that India was. As Brian Lara was to reveal after the series-clincher at Trinidad, they had a plan for every single Indian player. And that is exactly what Chappell and the Indian brain trust failed to anticipate.

Thinking on one's feet and tramline thinking, however well-oiled, are two very different things. Chappell, for all his talk about sticking to the basics, is obsessed with thresholds and sightlines, creating an environment where you are clearly entering his world, and once you are in it you cannot see out of it. Thus India, adhering to a predictable pattern, continued to play musical chairs with Dhoni, Suresh Raina and Irfan Pathan alternating in top-order slots, to the extent that it robbed the element of surprise when needed. The West Indies, meanwhile, were focussed on ensuring that the Indians had their swords, for the most part at least, stuck in the scabbards - bowling in the blockhole to Dhoni, exploiting Raina's lamentable lack of footwork and Pathan's penchant to go for the shots before he properly got his eye in - and, Lara, in what clearly demonstrated his nous and gambling instincts, using part-time spinners like Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels more often, to take the pace off the ball on sluggish pitches.

Only Yuvraj Singh, given the form of his life he is presently in, evaded the trap. Recognising the need to anchor the innings, he sometimes worked with good partners and did half the work, and then sometimes he worked with bad partners and did, as evidenced by an average of 45.75 in four games, all the work. Sehwag too was able subsequently to overcome the siege mentality, regaining his effervescence and more crucially, as his splendid 95 in the last match bore out, staying power, but admittedly a little too late.

What's in all this for India's evolution as a one-day team? Mainly, it would seem, to avoid making it more complicated than is necessary, for the cerebral duo of Chappell and Dravid seem to have a mistrust of simple solutions. In talking of the series loss, Dravid didn't seem overly despondent, delivering his usual spiel of taking positives out it, of the sobering experience being one more duck in the row. As for Chappell, typically there was absolutely no more to his face than function required but in private, he must be lacing his fingers together and cracking every possible knuckle. Trust the man to turn it around.