Recently West Indies defeated England by 2-1 in a T20I series. Thereis a talk of whether this is an alarming bell for Team India. But thisvictory has been achieved in T20 cricket and WI has to play ODI seriesfirst and then T20I. One truth is that WI defeated by Australia, SLand even Ireland as well.
File photo of Indian players celebrating. ANI
WI have three good seamers like Alzarri Joseph, Camer Roach and JasonHolder in ODI squad. Fabian Allen, Akeal Hosein and Hayden WalshJunior are the spinners. Alzarri played a few matches for MI in oneseason of IPL. Andy Roberts, WI great fast bowler likes his pace,while another fast bowler Ian Bishop likes him because he too fromAntigua.
Camer Roach despite Not a good height but especially on bouncywickets. His performance in Australia is very good. Even Ricky Pontingwas not comfortable against him in that series. Jason Holder took 15wickets in the five match T20I series against England. He has made arecord by taking maximum number of wickets in T20I series so far.
Before that Sohail Khan took 14 wickets against Mozambique and IshSodhi took 13 wickets against Australia. Odean Smith and RomarioShepherd are the team’s improvised seamers but Shepherd proved to be very costly.
The team have two left arm spinners – Fabian Allen andAkeal Hossain. Akeal`s varied bowling is effective while Fabian Allenhas often struggle to take wickets. The rest genuine spinner in the side is Hayden Walsh Jr. who took five-wicket haul against Australiain one occasion. He has shown his capabilities in Indian conditions also. He has played a series hosted by Afghanistan in Lucknow. In oneof the match of this series, he dismissed three Afghan batsmen.
Brendan King and Shai Hope are the openers of the team. Brendan King,recently in a low scoring match against England, scored half of the winning target. It would have been better if Kyle Meyers had placed in the team. Meyers scored double century in his very first Test. He wasplayed a T20I series against England. But he is more perfect batsmenin ODI cricket due to the mixture of patience and aggression. AnnBonner is also a good Test player who has played big innings againstSL and Bangladesh. Darren Bravo, Nicholas Pooran, Kieron Pollard andOdean Smith are the strength in middle order. Romario can also batwell in the lower order but he can prove to be a big difference incricket. Powel had completed a century in 51 balls against England inT20I format. Sheldon Cottrell is also an economica bowler who istrying to create pressure by bowling tight.WI have a deep batting line up in T20 cricket. Recently, againstEngland, Akeal Hossain, batting at number 10, scored 28 runs in thelast over while West Indies needed 30 runs to win. It is clear that WIdo not have such a big challenge in ODI cricket.
Team India has five consecutive losses of international matches (twoin tests and three in ODI). This is a big challenge to stop defeats.Whereas in T20, India should do power hitting in reply of WI`spower-hitting. Team India can show power in ODI marginalize this powerof WI. Team India can beat West Indies at least in ODIs and in T20Iformat is any body`s game in the series.
