Despite a green surface at Sabina Park in Jamaica, the venue for India's second Test against the West Indies, India are flying high. Their comprehensive innings victory in the first Test means it is West Indies who will have to do all the running now.
Even the absence of opener Murali Vijay could help India. The Tamil Nadu batsman hasn't been in the best of form lately – he has not crossed 50 in his last seven innings and was visibly troubled by the pace of Shannon Gabriel in Antigua.
Conversely, the person who replaces him, KL Rahul, is in a different zone. It is still early days for the 24-year-old from Bengaluru, but both his centuries in Test cricket have come in testing conditions – one against Australia in Sydney and the other against Sri Lanka in Colombo. Rahul was impressive in this year's Indian Premier League as well, besides scoring a century on his One Day International debut, though that was, admittedly, against Zimbabwe.
Perhaps that was why Virat Kohli seemed unaffected by the pitch or by the fact that West Indies would be playing a uncapped fast bowler, Alzarri Joseph. "We’re quite excited about it. We’ve got good pace. The bowlers are bowling good areas. We’d just like to focus on that and believe that our batsmen are good enough to tackle any pace and bounce that West Indies bowlers have," said the Indian captain on the eve of the match in an interview to BCCI.tv.
He also implied that he would be sticking to his five-bowler attack (three pacers and two spinners) which worked out so well for him, reasoning that the surface would provide good bounce – so a spinner couldn't be dropped out.
West Indies, on the other hand, will be pinning their hopes on Joseph. In case you've forget, he was the talk of the cricket world during the U19 World Cup earlier in 2016. His fiery pace bowling and aggression got him 13 wickets in the tournament, and played a big part in getting West Indies the title. He even hit South Africa's AB de Villiers with a fierce bouncer recently in the Caribbean Premier League.
West Indies will want to see more of the above. As for India, they'll just hope to watch out the initial burst and then settle in for a long haul.
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