Home team dismissed for 231 in second innings
Ashwin spins web for seven wickets
India win by innings and 92 runs
Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin collected seven wickets as India thrashed West Indies by an innings and 92 runs inside four days in the first test in Antigua on Sunday.
Ashwin, who also scored a century, completed a magnificent match with figures of 7-83 in the second innings as the home team collapsed to 231 all out.
It was Ashwin’s third career seven-wicket haul, and his first outside India.
Carlos Brathwaite, batting at number nine, top scored for West Indies with 51 not out, while Marlon Samuels (50) and Devendra Bishoo (45) tried to frustrate the visitors but they only delayed the inevitable.
India ensured they would not lose with a first-innings total of 566 for eight declared, and they will take even greater heart from the way their balanced five-pronged bowling attack—three pacemen and two spinners—rattled through the Windies twice in less than six sessions.
Pacemen Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav did the damage in the first innings with four wickets each, before Ashwin took over on Sunday.
West Indies, a lowly eighth in the International Cricket Council test rankings, started the four-test series as big underdogs, but their inability to make a contest of the first test will raise further concerns about the future of the Caribbean team in the five-day format.
The second test starts in Kingston, Jamaica, on Saturday.
(Reporting by Andrew Both in Cary, North Carolina; Editing by Toby Davis and Pritha Sarkar)
Reuters
