Caribbean challenge – Preview to India tour of West Indies

Within days of been knocked out of the ICC World T20 and after having faced a barrage of unnecessary – and in certain instances necessary – media scrutiny, the Indian team will find the peace of the Caribbean beaches a much needed break in itself. Thankfully for the team, they had decided to not fly back to India, but to take their flight to West Indies from England itself, thus allowing for the brouhaha and the negative press over their ouster to subside.

So what holds for them in West Indies in the four ODI series? I try and do some crystal ball gazing, and in the process preview the series.

The Opening Conundrum
There are six players missing from the last couple of international series; the tour to New Zealand and the ICC World T20. And there are gaping holes that these absentees have left which need to be plugged by the new guys. Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, are both openers, and both are missing from a line-up that needs someone to support Gautam Gambhir at the top. Rohit Sharma did work well in a couple of games, but it remains to be seen whether skipper Dhoni has pulled out another rabbit – read Tendulkar – out of the hat by having him continue as the ODI opener too.

Having said that, the selectors have provided Dhoni with the option of a specialist opening bat in the form of Murali Vijay. Vijay’s only international game has come in a test match against Australia and he looked to have acquitted himself well then. However, if the Indian Premier League is anything to go, Dhoni’s preferences did not entail the selection of Vijay till he was pushed to a corner regarding the same, which could give an insight into the captain’s way of thinking.

And who will don the gloves?
This is Dhoni’s best chance to rest those tired fingers and back and get Dinesh Karthik in as the wicket-keeper and a specialist batsman down the order. Previously, it would have been difficult to do that given that Karthik’s form with the bat had fallen away, but the IPL had shown him in good light with the bat in his hand. Dhoni has exhibited reluctance to get in another wicket-keeper in the past, but a little flexibility in plans could do him a world of good.

The Bowling Balance
This one could just give the captain a trifle more sleepless nights than necessary. The first of the questions to ponder over is whether going in two pace bowlers will do the trick, or does the team need three of them. If the answer to it is three, then it will essentially get Pragyan Ojha out of the playing eleven and Dhoni may want to go ahead with Ravindra Jadeja, while two quick bowlers will need two frontline spinners to support them. However, in case of both Ojha and Harbhajan Singh playing, the duties of the fifth bowler will invariably be performed by the combination of Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Pathan, Jadeja and in all probabilities, Rohit Sharma; all slow bowlers.

To me, having a line-up of six spinners and only a couple of quickies makes sense only if the pitch is akin to the one that a Wankhede or a Green Park in Kanpur has witnessed; not otherwise.

Dhoni also has the option of bowling Abhishek Nayar as a medium pace all-rounder, but whether he will want to dole out the Indian cap to Nayar as early as in the first game remains to be seen.

Selection gaffes or master-moves?
Lendl Simmons and Darren Sammy were two of West Indies’ best players in the ICC World T20, and yet they find themselves on the sidelines from the series. Now, either the selectors have something up their sleeve in the form of the selections of Darren Bravo and Narsingh Deonarine, or they have not been watching too much cricket in England. Either ways, the exclusion of the aforementioned does not make too much sense for a team that has already seen a mass exodus of cricketers to the more lucrative sports like soccer and basketball.

The Sarwan and Chanderpaul factor
While the usual suspects like Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo remain the perennial threats to the Indian team, the long forgotten men, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnaraine Chanderpaul will be the players to look out for. The pair is a class apart in their own right, but not really suited to the most condensed format of the game as was very evident in the World T20. However, they can hold their own in the fifty-over format and so would want to prove a thing or two during the series; and that, for the Indian bowlers may sound like a death knell.

Suneer Chowdhary
Suneer is a freelance cricket writer and can be reached at suneerchowdhary (at) gmail dot com