England shine on gray day

Overnight rains and damp outfield did not permit play till 12 noon. 56 minutes after start of play, the rains came down with West Indies 21/2, having won the toss and opted to bat. To cut a long story short, it was Manchester in all its glory.

An extra hour was played on the day, yet a total of 42 overs were all that could be squeezed in. And in that time, the West Indies -- batting first, on an overcast day, which would appear that captain Jimmy Adams got one wrong -- showed that they had not fully recovered from the 54 all out they managed at Lord's the other day.

Darren Gough and Andrew Caddick revelled in the conditions, with Gough taking Sherwin Campbell out through a low catch at third slip by Graham Thorpe, the batsman failing to counter the extra bounce.

Brian Lara got off the mark with an edged four, then for the next hour concentrated on survival, without showing any sign that he would be able to master either the conditions, which were murky, or the bowling, which was overcast. He also looked like he was still feeling the effects of recent hamstring problems.

Wavell Hinds, unlike Lara, opted for the offensive approach, and for a while -- especially when a leading edge to Gough's slower ball hung tantalisingly in the air while Robert Croft, with all the ponderousness of a Titanic, turned and lumbered after it only to fail to make a catch of it -- it seemed as if luck was with him.

It wasn't. One run later, he was given out caught behind off Dominic Cork, and the batsman calmly walked away. Enviable, that calm -- for the replays showed that he had missed the ball by a considerable distance. That makes it thrice in three Test innings that Hinds has been given a bad decision, and at this rate, you get the feeling the man will implode, if he continues to bottle his feelings in the way he has managed to thus far. What was most remarkable about the dismissal was the appeal -- Alec Stewart, playing in his 100th Test (earlier in the day, he and Michael Atherton, who attained the identical milestone, were given a few gifts including a special commerative cap and an urn) appealed as if his life depended on it, yet he was the one most clearly placed to see that the ball and bat had remained strangers to each other.

Jimmy Adams won't complain of the Hinds dismissal. He can't, because later in the same over, a straight one took him on the pads, as he played around the line, only for the umpire to turn the appeal down. Around this point, it was beginning to look like the umpires had scrapped the rule books, especially that portion that relates to modes of dismissal, and decided to do it by the good old four-leaf clover method -- He loves me, he loves me not, he is out, he is not...

Brian Lara's tortured tenure ended almost immediately thereafter, as he opened the bat face to a seaming delivery and touched it to Thorpe, yet again at third slip. Adams and Ramnaresh Sarwan, playing his first Test this summer, then got going on the repair job, Sarwan in particular impressing with the ease of his strokeplay.

When play finally came to a close, an hour later than it was supposed to and 48 overs under the prescribed 90 for a full day, Adams was batting 16, Sarwan on 17, with Windies 87/4 and on artificial respiration.

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