West Indies trail by 351 runs

Totally agree.

Relatively young team and one has to keep hope.

Smith and Paint batted well in the first innings and one will never know what would have happened had Smith not been given out on review!

Johnson also looked good and Shiv did his thing but I fear he is struggling. BTW Shiv in the field was a great advert for fitness.....

Taylor was absolute shite, some positive signs from Cotterell (although I have never liked him), but the bowling unit seems quite ineffective bar Roach! 

The dismissals, including Tiger, were all very soft.

Well the average age of the Indian XI in the current test vs Oz is 27.5.

The average age of the West Indies team in this test is 29.18.

India have 2 players 30 and above, WI have 5.

The only real youngsters are KB (age 22) and Blackwood (age 23).

Before this match started, someone was saying that Dwayne Smith should have been selected. Their premise was that Smith attacks balls with a lot of bounce. I think whoever said that was right.

Our batsmen are currently awkwardly defending everything that comes at their ribs and necks, or flailing awkwardly at balls outside off-stump.

A better approach might just be to attack like a bunch of madmen. Hook, duck, take some balls in the face and instead of driving at balls outside the off-stump, cut and slap like madmen. I think this is why Gayle has such a good record in South Africa. He's tall and attacks anything above the waist.

I thought Paint played well. He didn't score much, but he looked tight vs most of the bowlers; Steyn didn't trouble him. The height/bounce of Mokel and Phillander is what was unnerviving for Paint. He's never seen this kind of bounce in the West Indies.

I thought Blackwood was cheated out. I missed most of his batting though; I can't properly judge him.

Samuels, to me, still looks like a man on a mission. Samuels' problem is surviving the first phase of his innings. When he gets going, he looks like Carl Hooper, only less sexy and with tighter pants. When he first gets to the crease, though, he looks like a diseased drunk with rickets.

Devon Smith is still a waste of time.

Leon looked scared as hell in his first innings. The look on his face was hilarious; the guy looked like he was being molested. Then he decided to counterattack, which seemed to work well, until a soft dismissal. I hope he does well tomorrow. He reminds me of a slighter saner/smarter Johnson Charles.

Our tail-end needs to take a lesson from Australia; these days, tailenders are expected to bat. Our tail, in contrast, go out to the crease with the expectation that nothing is expected of them. The go out there intending to slog and get out. After Ramdin got out, our tail should have stalled for time. Instead, they deliberately played recklessly.

Ramdin, incidentally, might get exposed badly during this tour.

Like Sammy further up de road  :-[

www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-20/slammin-s...n-over-stars/5981504

The problem (as I see it) with an approach like that is that you might get away with it for an innings but in the long term you will fail.

The real (and sad) issue is that our batsmen do not face (in our dung heap) the quality of bowling on offer in South Africa. It therefore comes as no surprise to me when they fail.

Now it has been said that increasing the number of matches in the WI first class competition will help but facing and getting out to very average bowling for 10 instead of 5 matches solves nothing.

If we go back many (many, many many ) years when WI had a real strong first class competition, batsmen who scored runs and then made their test debut were facing bowling that generally was no stronger. I can only imagine what it must be like for these batsmen to suddenly face Steyn, Morkel and Philander on their pitches in SA - basically it's no contest.

Michael Holding was saying similar things yesterday. He said that in the 1970s and 80s, most of the islands had fierce bowling attacks, which had a knock-on effect on the regional batting.

Everyone knows this: our domestic system is rubbish, is not competitive enough and doesnt play enough, and so must produce mediocre players. Players who only mature in their mid 30s when they've "trained" by playing international cricket repeatedly.

Essentially, international cricket is where our domestic players go to learn cricket.

That is a significant point!