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| Edited By: Pranav Joshi |Source: DNA webdesk |Updated: Sep 29, 2017, 05:43 PM IST
India v/s West Indies is an utterly inconsequential series, but it has become interesting of late. Unfortunately, this is less due to the cricket and more due to West Indies' off-field issues with their cricket board.
Does anyone remember that India beat West Indies in the second ODI at Delhi? Or that West Indies shocked India in the first at Kochi? You could be forgiven for forgetting it. The third match at Vishakhapatnam got canceled thanks to cyclone Hudhud, only exposing BCCI's myopia in not shifting it when the cyclone warning was sounded. But most of all, the angry letters flying from the West Indian camp to the Players' Association chief Wavell Hinds and the WICB have grabbed headlines.
West Indies thus come into this match struggling for both relevance and motivation.
They have replaced Lendl Simmons with the spinner Nikita Miller, which means that either Darren or Dwayne Bravo will have to partner Dwayne Smith at the top of the order. After a good outing in Kochi where they amassed 321, the Windies batting exhibited a similar tendency to collapse in Delhi, losing 8 wickets for 45 runs and eventually the game.
India however haven't covered themselves in glory either. MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan have scored fifties in one match each, but neither Kohli nor Dhawan have looked in great form. Ajinkya Rahane is yet to get going as well. With the World Cup just a few months away, India's top order and No 4 are still not well set.
Interestingly, despite the form slump of late, Kohli only needs 7 runs in this match to average 50 at the end of 50 innings both home and away.
Likely XIs:
India: Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Ambati Rayudu, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni (captain and wicketkeeper), Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Amit Mishra, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami
West Indies: Dwayne Smith, Darren Bravo, Marlon Samuels, Denesh Ramdin (wicketkeeper), Dwayne Bravo (captain), Kieron Pollard, Darren Sammy, Andre Russell, Sulieman Benn, Ravi Rampaul, Jerome Taylor
