Goodbye to 50-50 and welcome to T20I’s. The five-match series gives both India and West Indies a chance to solidify their T20 World Cup preparations.
It gives a significant opportunity for both teams to solidify their strategies with the international event in Australia less than three months away.
India revised their batting strategy after they were unable to advance to the knockout stages of the 2021 competition. Meanwhile, this year, the Men in Blue have scored at a rate of 9.45 per over. This is their best scoring rate in any calendar year, excluding 2013, when they only played one T20I. India has actually scored more points this year than any other squad in the world.
India will want to further hone their strategy now that Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant, and Hardik Pandya are available after being rested for the ODI series. In order to maintain the players in the greatest possible frame of mind, they have also invited Paddy Upton back as a mental conditioning coach.
The Men in Blue will be locking horns with the Windies, who’s forte in recent years has been T20 international cricket. However, they won’t have many of their talents who shone in different T20 leagues throughout the world for the first time.
For West Indies Andre Russell, Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine, and Kieron Pollard are not in the team. This will be the inaugural international game held at Tarouba’s Brian Lara Stadium.
The last CPL game to be held at the location was in 2020. In those games, there were 7.40 runs per over scoring rate. However, there is an 80% probability of rain on Friday morning, which might play spoilsport.
West Indies vs India: Team News & Predicted line-up:
West Indies
Hetmyer passed a fitness test and is now back in the West Indies T20I team. Since Evin Lewis is still absent, West Indies will probably keep using the opening pairing of Kyle Mayers and Brandon King.
India
India appears to have located every piece of the puzzle. Now it’s a matter of putting them where they belong. Will they still start with Pant if KL Rahul can’t play? Has Deepak Hooda beaten Shreyas Iyer to a spot in the middle order with his all-around hitting skills and useful offspin? When Yuzvendra Chahal is not there, who will take the helm of the spin attack? We might have to wait till the big game to get the answers, it seems.
India (Probable XI): 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Rishabh Pant (wk), 3 Deepak Hooda/Shreyas Iyer, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Hardik Pandya, 6 Dinesh Karthik, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Harshal Patel, 9 R Ashwin/Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 11 Avesh Khan/Arshdeep Singh.
WI (Probable XI): 1 Kyle Mayers, 2 Brandon King, 3 Nicholas Pooran (capt & wk), 4 Shimron Hetmyer, 5 Rovman Powell, 6 Jason Holder, 7 Odean Smith/Dominic Drakes/Romario Shepherd, 8 Alzarri Joseph, 9 Akeal Hosein, 10 Obed McCoy, 11 Hayden Walsh Jr.
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