India has decided that enough is enough.
They are looking to rebuild.
This much is evident in the squads chosen for this current tour of the West Indies where a number of fresh new faces are on the respective teams.
Batsmen Shreyas Iyer and Manish Pandey, pacers Deepak Chahar and Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed and spinners Washington Sundar and Rahul Chahar (Deepak’s cousin) are undertaking their first tour of the Caribbean, the latter two are in the T20 side which has nine new faces from the team which played its last T20 against Australia earlier this year and which has won the three match series against the hosts.
Shikkar Dawan, Ravichandran Ashwin and Wriddiman Saha, (back up wicketkeeper) have returned to the team while Mahendra Singh Dhoni misses the tour for military reasons.
According to reports Dhoni sought permission to join up with the 106 Parachute Battalion of India’s Territorial Army where he is an Honorary Lieutenant Colonel.
Dhoni was given the opportunity by Chief Selector MSK Persaud of making himself unavailable to avoid the indignity of being dropped but whether he will figure in India’s future plans remains to be seen. As it is Rishabh Pant has been given this tour and this opportunity to cement himself in the post and so far has done a fairly decent job.
His understudy is veteran wicketkeeper/batsman Wriddhiman Saha.
The Indian selectors have axed Dinesh Karthik after a poor World Cup while opener Maywank Agarwal has been ignored for the ODIs which begin today at Providence although he has been included in the Test team.
Fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah will only play the test series as the selectors opt to monitor his use and add to his longevity while all-rounder Hardik Pandya has missed the tour due to injury (back).
The tour, undertaken in two parts, saw India winning the two T20s played in Central Broward Regional Park, Lauderhill Florida.
They also won the third and final T20 match played Tuesday at Providence thereby sweeping the reigning T20 World Champions.
The India team first played two T20 matches at Central Broward Regional Park back in 2016 when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the then West Indies Cricket Board WICB) decided to stage three additional T20 matches.
Obviously India does not see the West Indies as a serious competitor as they have not selected their best teams.
For those who can remember, tours by the Indian cricket team to the West Indies were gritty, hard-fought affairs not the one-sided encounters they are now.
India cricket teams overs the years have enjoyed tremendous following from fans in the region especially those in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
The exploits of Nari Contractor, Polly Umrigar, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Armanath, Mohammed Azhruddin, Anshuman Gaekwad, Bishen Singh Bedi, Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, Erapalli Prasana and others have been spoken about with bated breath long after those cricketers would have left these shores. In the case of Gavaskar, such were his exploits in the Caribbean that he was immortalized in song with a calypso, `Gavaskar, The Real Master’ composed about him.
And, no piece on Indo-West Indian cricket rivalry would be complete without mentioning the name Sachin Tendulkar, a player worthy of veneration and given constant adulation, throughout his illustrious career which has ended with him holding a few world records.
Tendulkar is the only batsman to score 100 international centuries and he is the holder of 19 Guinness world record titles including the most runs in One Day Internationals and the most runs scored in a calendar year.
Yesteryear, whenever India’s cricketers toured, it was cricket lovely cricket in the West Indies where you saw it. With no ODIs or T20s to rival it, Test cricket was the rave, the gentleman’s game.
Test matches were fierce battles of attrition which included a few ungentlemanly remarks (Sledging) and the crowds could not get enough of their staple.
Now, however, tours by the Indian team to this region are one-sided, not unlike David versus Goliath affairs, reduced in stature as well as length of test matches, although, lately, it is the Goliaths that win unlike the days past when for much of the Indo-West Indian Caribbean rivalry it was the home team that took the spoils on tours to this region.
The first tour by an India cricket team to the West Indies was in 1952-53.
Then, there were no One-Dayers or T20s so the two teams played five test matches with the West Indies winning the series 1-0.
The West Indies won the second test by 142 runs in a match played then over six days at the Kensington Oval in Barbados.
The other four matches were all drawn but Everton Weekes with two centuries, one a double and 716 runs and India’s Polly Umrigar also with two centuries and 560 runs distinguished themselves among the batsmen while Alf Valentine, 28 wickets and Subhash Gupte, 27 wickets were the standout bowlers.
By the second tour to the West Indies in 1961-62, the West Indies were a potent force. The batting, led by Rohan Kanhai, Sir Garfield Sobers and Easton Mc Morris and the bowling led by Wes Hall, Lance Gibbs and Sobers himself resulted in a sweep of the five test series.
However, by the time the next tour came around in 1970-71, India were coming into their own winning the five test series 1-0 with Gavaskar, Dilip Sardesai, Eknath Solkar, and the spinners Vankataraghavan, Bedi and Prasanna the top performers.
Fast forward to the 1975-76 series where the West Indies reverted to their winning ways in winning the four test series 2-1.
That tour was highlighted by India winning the third test chasing 406 in their second innings, a monumental accomplishment at the time, and achieved mainly through centuries from Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath.
The fourth test in Kingston, Jamaica will be remembered for the bodyline fast bowling by the West Indies’ pace attack as much as for the decision by India captain Bedi to declare twice in the match.
He had declared the first innings at 306-6 ostensibly to prevent the bowlers from the hostility of the West Indies four-prong pace attack.
West Indies captain Lloyd had reverted to his faster bowlers after the Trinidad match where the three- prong spin attack of Raphick Jumadeen, Albert Padmore and Imtiaz Ali had failed against the Indian batsmen.
The upshot was that Michael Holding, Wayne Daniel, Bernard Julien and Vanburn Holder’s `bodyline’ attack reaped massive dividends as Viswanath suffered a broken finger and Brijesh Patel was struck in the face.
Anshuman Gaekwad batted bravely for 81 before he was felled by a bouncer and was taken to the hospital forcing the unprecedented declaration by Bedi.
The West Indies then batted and made 391 and India in reply had reached 97-5 when Bedi declared a second leaving the home team a mere 13 runs for the series triumph.
In the 1982-83 series Lloyd led the West Indies to a 2-0 triumph in the five-test series leading from the front with a total of 407 runs.
The 1988-89 tour of the West Indies saw the England team playing four tests and five One-day Internationals.
The West Indies won the four test series comfortably 3-0 and the one-day Series 5-0. The 1996-97 tour of five test matches and four one day internationals ended 1-0 and 3-1 in West Indies’ favour while in 2001-02 West Indies won the five-test series 2-1 but lost the one-day series 1-2.
In 2006, India which had not won a test series in the Caribbean in 35 years won the four-test series 1-0 while the West Indies took the one day series 4-1.
In 2009 India, under Dhoni, played a four-match one-day series winning 2-1 while in 2011 India won the three-test series 3-0, the one-day series 3-2 and the solitary T20 match.
In 2016 India won the four test series 2-0, and the two match T20 series played in Broward County 1-0. The first such series there.
In 2017, India won the five-match one-day series 3-1 but lost the one-off T20 match.
Now, in 2019, the Indians have returned for a series of two tests and three one-day internationals.
So, Can the West Indies reverse the recent trend?
From the evidence of the T20 series it would seem the answer is no.
The West Indies selectors have opted for rebooting instead of rebuilding and they have again selected a number of past failures in the T20 and ODI teams.
The test team, though not yet selected, should be led once again by Jason holder who showed earlier in the year in the series against England at home that he is perfectly capable of leading from the front.
Off-spinning all-rounder Roston Chase, who was also impressive during that series should retain his place.
The West Indies selectors will have no choice but to chose their best team to contest the test series simply because the upcoming series marks the start of the International Cricket Council’s World test championships along with the Ashes series.
It means a chance for Windies captain Holder and company to start that long walk all the way to the top of the test ranking list.
India’s captain Kohli is excited about the upcoming series.
“It [the WTC] is very exciting. I think it’s happening at the right time for test cricket,” he told the Times of India.
“Although you are going to play a bilateral series, the meaning and importance are way more. You have to plan for every series. I was excited about something of this sort and now it’s coming to life,” he added.
The World Test Championships is being contested by the nine test playing countries and will end in June 2021 when the top two teams will contest the final.
The West Indies are ranked number eight only ahead of Bangladesh in the latest ICC test rankings.
They have their work cut out for them.
