West Indies is always a dangerous side in the shorter format because of the firepower they posses, especially in T20s. India have had the better of West Indies both in the ODIs and T20 series when they toured last time but currently they must be high on confidence after beat a strong and top-ranked England team 3-2 at home in the T20s.
India, on the other hand, must be short on confidence after the thrashing they got in the ODIs in South Africa and will have their work cut out against a team which can create havoc both with the bat and ball on their day. They are lead by the experienced Kieron Pollard, who had been playing under India’s new captain Rohit Sharma in the IPL for almost a decade. For wicketkeeper-batsman, they have Shai Hope who has got an average of 52 in ODIs with 10 hundreds and the last they won an ODI against India was due to his brilliance with the bat. Jason Holder too looked good both with the bat and ball and won the Man of the Series award against England.
Two weeks before this win against England, West Indies had gone down 2-1 to Ireland in their home ground. Pollard had said after that series loss to Ireland that it was a sad day for West Indies cricket. The 2016 champions also had a disappointing T20 World Cup and Pollard was furious with the negative chatter which was being spread in the media against the team and him.
He wanted to silence the critics who were questioning a player who has played 577 T20 matches and he did so by smart captaincy in the deciding T20 game. He backed players like Rovman Powell who scored a match-winning hundred in the third T20 and Akeal Hosein who took four wickets in the final game as well as Holder to seal the series for the home team.
Their only weak link is playing leg spin and India will hope to capitalise with Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi and Kuldeep Yadav being picked in the series to keep the hard-hitting West Indies players at bay. Time will tell how they will cope against the Indian spinners, but this West Indies team is a dangerous one on their day and Indians will be wary of them.
It should be a cracker of a series!
- Cricket enthusiast Anis Sajan is the Vice Chairman of Danube Group
