West Indies may have won the 1st ODI against India at Kochi convincingly, and highly unexpectedly, completely against the run of play, but that is something that you expect with the West Indians. They are the most inconsistent team in world cricket, equally capable of the most dominant displays and also the most abject performances.
The West Indies are a power-packed ODI side. Most of their players play for the top IPL clubs and are star players for each of their franchises. They have possibly the most explosive batting in world cricket, even though Chris Gayle, the most explosive batsman in world cricket doesn’t feature in it. Power hitting batsmen like Dwayne Smith, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Bravo, Kieran Pollard would feature in most batting line-ups in ODI or T20 cricket. Add to that four quality all-rounders, Bravo, Pollard, Darren Sammy and Anre Russel. Each of them world class for limited overs cricket. Even Marlon Samuels can be considered a fairly decent bowler too.
So, realistically, when compared man-to-man, there really isn’t much to choose between India and the West Indies, especially in limited overs cricket. However, the Windies have this reputation of being mavericks and highly inconsistent, which goes against them. Also, with a huge dispute with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) going on, the players cannot be expected to give their hundred percent in every match, when they have so many issues outside the playing field to worry about – getting paid for their efforts, for instance.
The Indians have no issues with money, they are by far the most well paid team in cricket. Captain MS Dhoni makes $30 million a year, which puts him in the same league as top earning footballers such as Wayne Rooney and Christiano Ronaldo. If a team could win every cricket match based on how much money they make alone, India would win everything there is to play for. But sadly for Dhoni’s men, it’s performance that counts in cricket, and they have been lagging behind. The England tour has left them exposed completely.
India have glaring weaknesses in batting and bowling. Their best batsmen, Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, are woefully out of form. And their bowling has no spirit, no pace, no power. And captain Dhono’s propensity to select medium pacers rather than fast bowlers like Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron isn’t helping matters. This is really quite strange, because Dhoni seems to be determined to defang his own bowling, sidelining his fast bowlers. Indians have perhaps the slowest bowling attack in the world and the expected selection of Ishant Sharma for the injured Mohit Sharma, rather than Aaron or Yadav, is just another retrograde step taken by Dhoni.
Pitch and weather
The pitch at Feroz Shah Kotla is expected to be a typical Indian pitch, slow and placid, ideal for batting and hell for bowlers. The weather in Delhi has been dry and sunny lately and this is expected to continue today as well.
The teams – India v West Indies:
India (likely): 1 Ajinkya Rahane, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Ambati Rayudu, 5 Suresh Raina, 6 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Amit Mishra/Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Ishant Sharma/Umesh Yadav, 11 Mohammed Shami
West Indies (likely): 1 Dwayne Smith, 2 Dwayne Bravo (capt), 3 Darren Bravo, 4 Marlon Samuels, 5 D Ramdin (wk), 6 Kieron Pollard 7 Darren Sammy, 8 Andre Russell, 9 Sulieman Benn, 10 Ravi Rampaul, 11 Jerome Taylor
