India give signal of intent

Not only did India demoralise the current World Cup holders, they did it with a dominance and arrogance generally left for a backyard one-day contest. Richie Benaud summed it up immaculately when he commented that this was "one of the best demolition jobs I have seen in my life". Knowing that Richie has seen massive amounts of cricket in his life, this is a perfect summation of proceedings at Taunton.

Although Sussex's batsmen Toby Pierce, Richard Montgomerie and Chris Adams weren't as lethal in their assault on my Middlesex team-mates as Ganguly and Dravid were on the Sri Lankans, I can sympathise with Ranatunga's team. Not only was it runs galore at Taunton, Lord's was also the scene of a run feast, less entertaining and important in the scheme of cricket, but nonetheless just as frustrating from your correspondent's viewpoint.

From a spectator's point of view it must have been heaven for those fans who love the traditional dominance of bat over ball in the one-day game. Using another expert's opinion, Sir Viv Richards made a very valid comment after the game when he said: "As the sun continues to shine in England, we may see a change in the dominating forces in this World Cup. The pitches will tend to flatten out and the clearer conditions will likely lead to less swinging of the white ball."

From my experience in England I couldn't agree with him more, as I would say that English pitches are among the best batting surfaces in the world when the summer takes control. Lightning-fast outfields and flat lifeless pitches make the surfaces we have witnessed so far in the Cup a far cry for the normal English strips. I have been surprised to see so much life in the recent conditions and I am certain this is going to diminish if the sun continues to shine and the clouds are replaced by glorious summer skies. Today could just be the start of entertaining run-scoring that is sure to turn the momentum seen so far.

This is going to hurt the batting assassins of Sri Lanka, who now look likely to take an early passage home after today's drubbing. While the Sri Lankans are out, it is certainly not so for South Africa, who continued their dominance against the Kenyans. They are sure to improve over time with this World Cup experience.

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