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 d

See Full Page