FIRST STRIKE: After 26 years, smiles are back on Indian faces in the West Indies

After the Guyana Test was drawn it was obvious that India and the West Indies could not distance themselves from each other. I thought then that the second Test in Trinidad could be the decisive game, since it could well be the only one in which the batsmen would not be in full control. Only at the Queen's Park Oval would the bowlers have a good chance of getting a result.

UP AND RUNNING: India had a good start

Seldom do we see two cricket teams so similar in endeavour, effort and abilities. After the rain-affected game at the Bourda, I reckoned the team that won first would win the series. When Cameron Cuffy sliced Zaheer Khan to Sanjay Bangar at gully, giving India a 37-run victory at the Queen's Park Oval, that thought came back to me. The next three Test matches are going to be close, sure. But as of now, unless the West Indies find something special in their bowling-competent as it was and is-the Indians will win their second series in the Caribbean after 1971 and their first overseas series since 1986. They have set it up well.

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PITCH REPORT It's the Team, Stupid CLASSY COG: Tendulkar Before the tour of the West Indies, an Indian cricketer was asked whether it was the batsmen who lost matches for the team overseas by failing to put up enough runs. He was not amused, "When we lose a match, we all lose. It's not like the batsmen lose and the bowlers don't. That's stupid." It is indeed. Trinidad has shown exactly how stupid. On Day 1 of the Test, Sachin Tendulkar equalled Sir Don Bradman's record of 29 Test centuries with his steeliest hundred yet. His innings was analysed, the genuflections completed, the tributes paid. By Day 5, in the face of something more powerful, it quietly stepped into the record books. The lingering memory from the Queen's Park Oval will always be the sight of the Indians after the last wicket fell. They raced around crazy-eyed, seemingly directionless. Then almost by magic, they gravitated towards each other, all the time shrieking wordlessly like kids being let out in the open after five days cooped up in a classroom. Tendulkar put it best, "Nobody has got a five-wicket haul and nobody has a big hundred from this game. Still we won. That's what winning for a team is all about." That's the way it will always be. Tendulkar should know: he has spent 13 years on the team but was part of only the third away Test win of his career last week. He has played in three World Cups, the best being a semi-final spot. He is often lauded for his genius and increasingly now is damned by it; India fails often, it is said, because the great Tendulkar is not great enough and cannot haul them home when needed. That is not about to happen. Find someone else. Find three batsmen willing to forge partnerships and build respectable totals from rock bottom, if necessary. Find two bowlers willing to sweat, another who will not stagger. Find a wicketkeeper and supporting fielders who hold on to chances like a shipwrecked man does a log of wood. They have, Tendulkar included, been with the team for some time. In Trinidad, India found them all. The clash of talents and egos that is Tendulkar vs Lara is enjoyable. But remember Lara scored 688 runs in three Tests against Sri Lanka in the winter and still the West Indies lost 0-3. Tendulkar got a second-innings duck in Trinidad and still India won. If there's anything that Trinidad should bring home it is this: Tendulkar is a cog in the wheel; a priceless, 24-carat cog, a diamond-studded, precision-crafted cog, sure. But a cog nevertheless. He cannot and should not be expected to be the force that pushes the wheels ahead. The wheel will move only when its other parts are in working order. -Sharda Ugra

The similarities between these two teams are obvious: India's bowling is centred on old maestro Javagal Srinath and can be potent due to the young fast bowlers and the sometimes-effective Harbhajan Singh, who was disappointing in Trinidad. The West Indies attack revolves around Merv Dillon, but the supporting cast of Cuffy, Adam Sanford and Marlon Black is not as effective. Then there are the tail-enders, equal in their ineptness.

The critical difference between these two teams is not the bowling, but the middle-order batting. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman and Sourav Ganguly are more experienced and-I would even stretch it-probably more capable than Carl Hooper, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Brian Lara and Ramnaresh Sarwan. Because of this storehouse of experience, the Indians adjust more quickly to situations than the West Indies do.

The belief that Lara and Tendulkar would run and rule this cricket series is laughable. They may both make many runs but it is the other players who will tilt the balance, despite the contrasting captaincies.

Hooper is a little bit more of a captain than Ganguly, who is too involved in everything his team does. He sets too many fields and expects his team to follow blindly. That seldom happens. The Indians are talented players and sometimes do their own thing. Hooper allows his guys to flow freely.

One aspect of the "performances" in Port of Spain that has gone unnoticed is the umpiring. We have been told that the current umpires are the "elite" of the world cricket. If the decisions that Lara got in Guyana or Chanderpaul got in the second Test are "elite", then I am a mad man. Even when umpires have the benefit of technology-as Eddie Nicholls had for a catch off Chanderpaul that could have won the game for India-they make the wrong decision. There is no cheating or bias thanks to the "elite" panel but the standards are not good. The umpires are simply making some very big mistakes and all we can hope for is that their standards-both on and off the field-get better. My biggest peeve is that there is no call-back, no accountability for the umpires. We see them making mistakes all the time, but they still go on to the next Test. But any player who does anything wrong is ostracised, banned or fined.

On to Barbados then: where the wicket used to be one of the bounciest in the Caribbean but now has a history of big hundreds and where the last two Tests were drawn. In the one before that, however, West Indies chased 308 and won by a wicket.

(Former West Indian fast bowler Colin Croft is expert columnist for the website cricinfo.com)