"Spinners don’t beat the West Indies. If you are going in the Test series, hoping to beat them on the spin, I think you better change your mind," is Roberts' chilling verdict on India's plan to stack up their team with three spinners for the forthcoming Test series.

"There is an old saying that the West Indians can’t play spin. But the majority of time the West Indians lose, they lose to fast bowling," he says.

Roberts has not seen much of Indian fast bowlers but says you could not bowl slow in the air and hope the pitch will assist you in hurrying up the batsmen.

"Your fast bowlers must get one thing straight. If you don’t have the pace, you need to be consistent. They haven’t been patient enough.

"People are making a lot of fuss about the pitch not being quick. But the ball doesn’t come off quicker off the wicket than when you release it.

"If you bowl slowly, the ball will come out of it slowly. You are always a lot quicker through the air than you are off the pitch," he says.

Having dismissed the Indian bowling, Roberts doesn’t see much merit in West Indian attack either.

"I am not happy with our bowling. I don’t think it is good enough to win Test matches. In my estimation the bowling at the moment doesn’t have any penetration at all."

Roberts foresees that the likes of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman will give the West Indian bowlers more trouble than somebody like Virender Sehwag.

"Sehwag is his day player. On his day, he could destroy but I think the likes of Dravid and Laxman would give us more problem. They like to accumulate runs, rather than be a dasher.

"Dravid is probably one of the best batsman in the world. But I feel sorry that Tendulkar is not here. When you have two of the best players in the planet (the other being Brian Lara), they should be on display."

Roberts, who took 202 wickets from 47 Tests in his illustrious career at 25.61, feels that fast bowlers today are being destroyed by coaches.

"The coaches are the main problem. I believe fast bowlers must be allowed to bowl and do what they want to do. Fast bowlers are not made, they are born.

"Guys are not as strong as they were in the past. Bowlers bowl in the mid-90s in the first innings but can’t go beyond mid-80s in the second.

"It's a misconception that long people bowl fast. Long people get a lot of bounce but they don’t necessarily bowl fast. You check majority of fast bowlers, they are 6' 3" and under. You don’t find 6' 5" and 6' 6" as quick fast bowlers.

"If you can make fast bowlers, Australia would have a lot of fast bowlers.

But even they are trying to prolong Glenn Mcgrath's career because they have nobody else.

"Coaches are making fast bowlers change their action. They are telling them how to eat certain diet, eat certain things. These things are crippling the development of fast bowlers."

Roberts has little doubt that the batsmen of his time had better technique than ones of today.

"We were a lot better technical players in our days. In our days, batsmen used to watch the ball. Today, they usually don’t watch the ball as long as possible.

"They have a lot of protective gear. So the moment you see the short ball, you take your eyes off.

"Even a great player like Lara or Sachin don’t handle it well either. Dravid handles short ball lot better than Sachin. Only Ricky Ponting relatively plays short ball better."

Having spoken about the modern masters, Roberts turns to batsmen of his time.

"Sunny (Gavaskar) was one of the best but he had trouble on bouncy pitches. Viswanath was much better player of bouncy ball because he was so wristy. "Amarnath played short ball very well for one season but when we went to India, we didn’t bowl the same way to him. We kept the ball a lot up to him. So when he got the short ball, he was in no position to play.

"Ian Chappell was very good, so was Zaheer Abbas. Barry Richards too was one of the greatest but he had a big problem against short ball. He never was comfortable against genuine fast bowling.

"To my mind, Viv Richards was the best of all. I never found any weakness in Viv. He played short ball as well as anyone has played it ever. He drove well, he cut well. He played spin as well as anybody."