Ashwin, Saha weather storm to restore parity

Tue, Aug 9, '16

After losing their top order cheaply on the first day of the third Test against West Indies, India bounced back through some hard graft, ending a day of attritional cricket on 234 for 5 from 90 overs on Tuesday (August 9). R Ashwin, batting on 75, was holding fort for India alongside Wriddhiman Saha, who had an unbeaten 46 to his name.

Ahead of this Test, much talk swirled around selection, and despite all the speculation, Virat Kohli showed that he had the element of surprise, twirling his captaincy wand and pulling a Rohit Sharma out of the hat. Ravindra Jadeja replacing Amit Mishra was on the cards, Bhuvneshwar Kumar coming in for Umesh Yadav was not a shock, but leaving M Vijay on the bench, and dropping Cheteshwar Pujara was a stunning, if unsuccessful, reflection of how modern captains think. At least this one, a firm believer in horses for courses.

As it turned out, the move didn't bear success, with Shikhar Dhawan being strangled down the legside by Shannon Gabriel, who has bowled with great verve and potency for unfairly little returns. The start was a rocky one for India and the move to fit Rohit into the batting order meant that Kohli promoted himself to No. 3. In four innings in that position Kohli has never made a half-century, scoring only 90 runs in all, as against No. 4, his natural spot, where he strikes at 50.64 and has eight centuries to go with four fifties.

Full report and scorecard at ICCcricket