Cricket: India Win ODI Series, Beat A Resistant West Indies!

Photo: India today.in

India have never lost a One-Day International (ODI) Series against the West Indies since 2007, and have become the best world team in terms of maximum ODI Series wins (32) during this decade surpassing Australia and England. In an absorbing match played in Cuttuk last evening India managed to overcome West Indies by 4 wickets in the penultimate over. In a high scoring match WI, put into bat, had a late charge led by skipper Kieron Pollard and Nicholas Puran setting a challenging total of 315--a score over 300 always had a winning chance, and but for the huge hits by Shardul Thakur and in spite of man-of-the-match Virat Kohli's knock of 85 with rollicking half centuries by Rohit Sharma and K Rahul the match could've gone in either direction.

This brings us to the point I'd like to make about West Indies. For the first time WI didn't show their traditional 'unpredictability', and offered a lot of resistance and fighting spirit in almost all the matches in both the T20I and ODI series. They won two matches respectively in both the series quite convincingly. Led by the IPL-enriched Kieron Pollard, with the absence of Chris Gayle & Andrew Russel, perhaps showed the potential they failed to play to in the ICC World Cup-2019. Their batsmen Lewis, Hope, Heitmyer and others played consistently, never triggering a batting collapse that has been the order of the day till late. Such resurgence augurs well for the with ICC T20 World Cup coming up next year in Australia. Their pacers too, particularly Paul and Cottrell, bowled with fire.

Of course, India's bowling attack without Bhubaneswar, Bumrah and Pandya lacked some bite. The basic problem for Team India continues to be the non-performing young ' talents' and the unceasing 'experimentation', as usual. It's been proved again and again that unless at least 2 of their top four, including Shikhar Dhawan, play l---o---n---g innings India can hardly force a win, barring perhaps the odd ones including low-scoring games. However, the 'pacers' trend for India goes on unabated which is very promising, both away and at home, as we mentioned last time. India is set to play cricket with Sri Lanka next.

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