Shami four-for leaves West Indies seven down

Tea West Indies 157 for 7 (Holder 9*, Dowrich 6*, Shami 4-41) trail India 566 for 8 decl. by 409 runsLive scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Mohammed Shami bowled through the 2015 World Cup with a busted knee. By the end of it, he needed a surgery, lost out on the IPL earnings and missed more than a year of international cricket. The BCCI compensated him for the loss of IPL money, a fist recorded instance. Once he was fit, Shami walked into the Test XI in Antigua, and showed why he is a man worth looking after.

On a slow pitch where it looked difficult to dismiss batsmen who didn’t play shots, Shami bowled with menace to take four wickets after which Umesh Yadav chipped in to leave West Indies seven down at tea on the third day. Kraigg Brathwaite, a man known for quiet defiance, denied India for 218 balls, but the visitors found a way around him and then broke through him about 20 minutes before tea.

From the time Brathwaite and nightwatchman Devendra Bishoo frustrated India for 16 overs, it was clear the bowlers would need to prise wickets out. Patience, the buzzword leading into the series, was tested. The patience was more notional than literal: India didn’t lose hope, but they kept trying things. In the half hour leading into lunch, Virat Kohli changed the bowling from one end every two overs. Until the wickets came, they tried the short ball, looked for the outside edge, and the bowlers themselves tried different angles on the crease.

A measure of the difficulty in taking 20 wickets against a determined batting unit was how both wickets in the first session came through injudicious shots. It was a period when West Indies didn’t look for runs, which made it …

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