Shami four leave 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. In what is a first such recorded instance, the BCCI compensated him for the loss of IPL money. Once he was fit again, Shami walked into the Test XI in Antigua, and showed why he is a man worth looking after. On a slow pitch that it looked difficult to get batsmen who didn’t play shots, Shami bowled with menace to take four wickets after which Umesh Yadav struck to leave West Indies seven down at tea on the third day. Kraigg Brathwaite, a man known for such quiet defiance, denied India for 218 balls, but India first 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 India bowlers would need to prise the 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 difficulty of taking 20 wickets against a patient batting unit was that both the wickets in the first session came through injudicious shots. It was otherwise a session when West Indies didn’t look for runs, which made it difficult for wickets …

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