India vs WI, 3rd ODI: Loads of problems and plenty of lessons to learn for India
The one-day series against the West Indies, which was supposed to be a practice match for Team India, has turned into a nightmare. India lost to the West Indies by 48 runs in the 3rd one-day match at Pune. Now the five-match one-day series is locked at 1-1 with the second match ending in a tie.
Before the one-day series started, there was only talk about how India should experiment with their playing XI against this depleted West Indies side. Doubts were raised about the capability of the West Indies bowling attack to go past India’s top 3 so that the middle-order would get the much-needed practice in the middle.
But for Virat Kohli’s stupendous efforts, West Indies would have been leading the series 3-0. It was the same West Indies team which failed to qualify automatically for the World Cup and forced to play the World Cup qualifiers.
This West Indies team is without players of the calibre of Chris Gayle, Evin Lewis, Darren Bravo, Dwayne Bravo, Pollard, Andrew Russel, Sunil Narine, and Samuel Badree. A strong playing XI can be fielded with these missed out players.
India, playing on home, are struggling against a team without these great players. To add to that, India have been lucky with the toss on all 3 occasions but still failed to press home the advantage.
The only positive for India in the series has been the form of captain Kohli who continues to break one record after another. On Saturday, Kohli duly completed his 38th ODI century and became the first Indian to score three consecutive centuries in ODIs. In the fourth ODI, Kohli would strive to equal the record of Kumar Sangakkara for the maximum number of consecutive hundreds in ODIs.
Problems, lessons to learn and solutions for the problems
1. Wrong team composition
India decided to drop Jadeja from the team which weakened the batting considerably and still decided to chase. There was nothing left for India in terms of batting after M.S. Dhoni, who himself has not been in the best of forms.
The Indians should learn that their batting is already weak except for the top 3. In such a situation, it would not be prudent to further weaken their batting on the pretext of strengthening their bowling.