This will be a question that will haunt many a fans around the world. In a bid to get to his century against England at Lord’s Chandimal slowed down and had his partner Angelo Mathews pat down deliveries such that he had enough going for him during the time.

In the end, Chandimal did get to his 100 but one wasn’t surprised to see Tillakaratne Dilshan being not too happy about the way his batsman had gone about his business.

Quite frankly, I am of the form belief that centuries and statistics should mean nothing in a team sport – only a win or loss should. However, with the kind of focus on the number of 100s that a batsman has hit in his career in any format, it is only natural that there will be that clamour for a 100 that Chandimal showed.

One feels that Chandimal shouldn’t have been given the man of the match, as a lesson to play for the team. One may argue that the match was already won by then, but things have been known to go wrong in the past!

Daryl Harper may have been sidelined by the Indians but that has meant that he has taken his frustration out by accusing the Indians of being rude.

What had happened was that the Indians had received a raw deal from the umpiring decisions in the first Test. This had led the Indian captain MS Dhoni to comment in the press conference that the umpiring could have been better and had that happened, the side would have been home much earlier.

This led to a lot of criticism of Harper and he had withdrawn from the final Test.

However, in an interview, he has said that the Indian team was ill-behaved and even the West Indians had complained to him about it. He added that his relation with Dhoni wasn’t the best.
Harper also suggested that he had made 94% of the decisions correctly and that was an above average figure. He defended himself by saying that he had made only two mistakes in the game which the Indians had complained of.

Harper was the umpire who had given Sachin Tendulkar out lbw when the ball had hit his shoulder in a Test match.

Going by the way the Indians played in the first Test match against West Indies on a two-paced track, the second game sure promises to be a better and a more equal game. The reason for that is simple – the pitch at Barbados will be quick and will make life difficult for the batsmen who cannot play pace and bounce too well.

In short, it will be difficult for the Indians.

There is also another way of looking at things. Usually, the Indian side plays better over the series – they start off slowly and then regain their confidence and go after the opponents later. If that is any indication then India can be expected to do better with their batting.

In the first Test match, the batting showed signs of inexperience and this will need to change. The opening batsmen, Murali Vijay and Abhinav Mukund will need to bat longer, and Virat Kohli will need to score more.

VVS Laxman could be the one player to watch out for – he will comeback with a bang.

It is strange to see the Indian team go into the fourth ODI against the West Indies with so many changes made to their side.

The reason one says that it is strange is because there cannot be too much doubt that that this is already a second string Indian side and to make further changes to the line-up would make no sense at all.

However, the Indians went in with three changes – dropping two of their best bowlers and going in with a make-shift opener.

This meant that first of all, on a difficult pitch, the West Indians recovered to make 249 in their 50 overs and got the Indians to chase a big score. And this was followed by a batting collapse thanks to the lack of top-order form.

Whatever is Yusuf Pathan doing in the playing eleven after his continuous show of bad form remains to be seen. He should have been replaced by Manoj Tiwary – instead, a specialist opener in Shikhar Dhawan gets dropped. Really, the selection should have shown some faith.

Australian opening batsman Simon Katich has panned the Australian cricket board for having given him the axe from the Australian side. Katich’s contract was torn up by the Australian board because they want to look into the future.

However, Katich said that he was shocked by the decision and even thought of taking legal action against the board. He said that it was stunning that a panel of part-time selectors had been appointed to take decisions on players who earned more than a million dollars each year, which meant that there was a mismatch.

He added that the Australian board needs to rethink of their strategies – citing examples of how they messed up with the spinner-issue since the retirement of Shane Warne and played into England’s hands before the Ashes by getting in 17 players in the squad.

What was interesting to see is that the Australian board has decided not to take any action against the player .

So Matt Prior breaks a window pane at Lord’s and gets away as if he has done nothing? What would have happened had an Asian player done the same – thrown his kit in disgust and broken some equipment at the Mecca of cricket? Would he have been forgiven as easily?

Let’s even not talk about Asian cricketers. What about Ricky Ponting? Only recently, he had broken a television during the World Cup and not only was he reprimanded by the match referee but also castigated in the media.

What is Prior being allowed to go unscathed? Is it because of the reputation that Ponting has? But then, Prior has been involved in another jelly-beans incident where he made a puerile error of throwing jelly-beans in an effort to rile the opposition bowler. He got his wish and England were blown away by Zaheer Khan.

This time again, his captain has hinted that the side missed an opportunity to win the game because of this incident.