The conditions were draining. They had been so even before the match commenced at Port-of-Spain on Monday. The locals too, who consider any drink other than their rum to be not worth it, were busy guzzling up the slightly more sober, hydrating liquids. If there’s one thing more unbearable than the spicy peppers in Trinidad, it is the incessant humidity, whether or not the sun is blazing down, which it does almost always.
And by the time Rohit Sharma walked out to bat, dark and threatening clouds had engulfed the Queen’s Park Oval, sending statisticians and the two dressing-rooms scurrying for the Duckworth-Lewis predictive scores. With India having slumped to 61/3 with the loss of S Badrinath, there was a lot of work to be done for Sharma and Dhawan — who was batting at the other end —and the rest of the middle-order.
The West Indians had their tails up, especially leg-spinner Devendra Bishoo, who had just accounted for Badrinath and settled into a nice rhythm. But after surviving a not-so-confident lbw appeal off the first ball he faced, Sharma decided to break open the shackles. On the third delivery, the youngster stepped down the wicket to Bishoo and attempted to hit his leg-break straight into the Cyril Duprey Stand on the far side of the ground.
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