Shivnarine Chanderpaul will never be a favourite player of the batting purists. There's the slow, ungainly creep across the stumps, feet shuffling around as if reluctant to get into position. Then there's the between-delivery twitches and mannerisms, almost enough to drive an onlooker to distraction, and seemingly symptomatic of a nervous and troubled mind.

Yet take a look at Chanderpaul's eyes as he awaits the bowling, and you'll see why he is so successful. In them there is a fiery intensity, reservoirs of determination and a will of rough-hewn granite. Behind them there ticks one of the most adroit cricketing brains of the modern age - but, unfortunately for Chanderpaul, none of his team-mates seem to share these qualities.

In the second ODI at Cuttack, the West Indies had India reeling on the ropes at 90-7, but a marked lack of intensity in the latter stages let them get off the hook and run away to the relative safety of 189 on an appallingly-prepared dustbowl of a pitch. Still an easily reachable target, but Chanderpaul was let down time and again in his futile quest to reach the score. He was eventually last out for a grafted 67, his second successive sparkling effort in a losing cause.

In recent times, and most notably at last year's Champions Trophy, the young West Indians were showing the consistency and the intelligence to become a winning side, but all that fell to pieces at Cuttack.

Accusations of laziness and insouciance have long been levelled at stand-in captain Chris Gayle, and on this occasion the accusation seemed an entirely fair one. In what was his first experience of international captaincy, he started well enough but let the game drift terminally when the Windies should have been tightening the noose. His laid-back approach perhaps rubbed off on the rest of the team as intensity levels visibly dropped, allied with a baffling under-use of the two spinners (himself and Marlon Samuels). Judging by the extravagant turn utilised to great effect by the Indian spin triumvirate, this could be what lost the Windies the game.

What actually brought about their defeat was a collection of abject dismissals, each batsman falling over himself to outdo the last in ineptitude. Samuels is, like Gayle, a laid-back character, but sometimes you fear he might just lapse into a coma. He has the ability to thrash all attacks, as he demonstrated against Pakistan in December, but needs to spend less time on looking cool and more time on grafting runs.