India's fallibility gives series context

When the India v West Indies series, which begins at Feroz Shah Kotla on Sunday, first turned up on the calendar, there was much mumbling and grumbling from the hosts. Sandwiched between the tours of England and Australia, it was given the status of a meaningless shred of lettuce in a double cheeseburger. West Indies are amongst the game's contemporary strugglers (a fact that is easy to understand but hard to keep writing about), they have not been on a full Test series in India for nine years, during which India toured the Caribbean thrice.

To mark the moaning and mourning, the Kotla Test will be the first of three week-day specials, from Sunday to Thursday. Eden Gardens runs Monday to Friday game and Mumbai begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Saturday.

Yet, suddenly the lettuce is not quite so meaningless for India - because the first of that burger led to a bout of coughing and choking (no pun intended, honestly) that lasted three months. This series, then, might actually be the best way to get the Test team's breathing back to normal and ensure that they digest the rest of what awaits them.

If England became a case study of the "everything that could go wrong did go wrong" tour for the Indians, the three Tests against West Indies will be a check of whether all their best parts can get back to working order. Had this series not been around, the R&R available for the Indians after the bruises in England would have consisted largely of a few first-class cricket games for every player. West Indies, despite all their recent struggles, are an opposition that will ask far tougher questions.

India's comfort at home is expected to give its injured players a chance to test their recovery, their out of form batsmen a much-needed inner kick of confidence and also a return to even keel, the team's faith in its ability to create and seize opportunities to win five-day games. For the moment, it has certainly given India's selectors, a chance to offer proof of their bravado before they actually pick the 15 for Australia.

That, however, is weeks ahead. Which is where West Indies want India to be looking, far ahead of them, ahead even of themselves. Captain MS Dhoni was not about to be distracted. When asked about the dramas of England, he said, "There's no good reason why we should be thinking about England. It is all about looking ahead, that is what we have done." A few minutes later, a query popped up about the Australia tour, to which he said, "the Australia series is too far away, no point thinking about it." The immediacy of India's present involves being up against a team to whom this series is quite completely, the real deal. In the time that West Indies have been kept away from a tour of India, the game's goalposts itself have shifted. Darren Sammy's men now know where it's at.

The Tests against India are not about trial-error-tinkering of any kind. When the captain Sammy called the series, "the biggest" for most of his team, it was not as if he was merely talking the series up. The three Tests will be a demanding examination of West Indies' capabilities as travellers. Victory in Bangladesh, they know, was enjoyable, welcome, rousing even but not exactly the Normandy landing. Bangladesh is one of only three countries where West Indies have won an overseas Test in the last 10 years, South Africa and Zimbabwe being the other two. The big benefit from the West Indies win in Dhaka is that they travel to India with match-winning performances from some of their inexperienced players, particularly legspinner Devendra Bishoo, and top order batsmen Kirk Edwards and Darren Bravo. They bring with them a frontline bowling attack - Fidel Edwards, Kemar Roach, Ravi Rampaul - with more Tests between them than India's main bowlers have played. (Ishant Sharma and Pragyan Ojha are still one short of a combined experience of 50 Tests and Dhoni has promised two debuts at the Kotla).

Outside the more familiar parameters of an Indian home series - slow, flat wickets, heaps of runs - the series will test the resolve in the younger West Indian batsmen and the strength of India's bowling bench. Even without the presence of Chris Gayle, a series once glumly considered of as a mundane afterthought, is now full to the brim with individual stories. The question about the Tendulkar Hundred is the least of them, at the moment, even to the man himself. What is of greater interest is whether he will be back to the match fitness that makes him both confident and relaxed. Virender Sehwag's shoulder has to be worked to full stretch, his collective with Gautam Gambhir needs to get going again. Darren Bravo must prove that he is a worthy successor to Sir Brian Charles. Marlon Samuels must make himself truly valuable to the West Indies again. Ishant must be ready to lead the bowling regardless of Zaheer Khan's medical condition (for the moment, reported to be improving) and ankle-muncher wickets.

This week, Delhi's winter suddenly set in with foggy skies, weak dawns and early sunsets. It is exactly what the India v West Indies series had promised to be when first announced: bleakly grey, largely uneventful, predictable even. On the eve of India's first Test at home versus West Indies in almost a decade, a series of revelations await. Who knows, we may even be witness to a burst of winter sunshine.