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Having taken a 1-0 lead, India would be keen to wrap up the rain-truncated one-day series here as they take on West Indies in the fourth match tomorrow on a ground that has been traditionally lucky for them. India’s inability to pull through in the final matches in recent times has made them treat the penultimate game tomorrow as an all-important affair.
Skipper Sourav Ganguly was quite confident about his team taking a winning 2-0 lead tomorrow after the first two, one-day internationals at Jamaica were washed out by rains. “We don’t want to leave it to the last game,” said Ganguly. “We would finish the job straightaway.”
Part of the enthusiasm stems from the fact that the Queen’s Park Oval has been the luckiest ground for the Indians in the Caribbean. All their three Test victories in West Indies have come at this venue with the latest one coming in this tour. The Indians are also buoyed by their comprehensive seven-wicket win in the Bridgetown one-dayer, especially with the way the junior members of the team fared.
Speedster Tinu Yohannan and left-hand batsman Dinesh Mongia, the only two players not to have got a single Test on this tour despite being in the squad, won the match for the Indians with their sterling performances. The arrival of younger players like Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammand Kaif also brought a refreshing improvement in the fielding standards and coach John Wright and Ganguly were satisfied with their performance.
“We are getting fitter as a group. You can see how important it is to have a unit where everyone is fielding to a reasonable standard,” Wright said. “I don’t want to get carried away but the guys have worked very hard on the tour,” he said.
The strategy to ask Rahul Dravid to double up as wicket-keeper also went on reasonably well with the Indian vice-captain coming up with a good catch and a stumping. Considering the all-round performance by the team in the previous match, India are unlikely to make any changes in their side. They are also likely to stick to their plan of opening with Ganguly and Sehwag while batting first.
The highest run-getter for India in the Test series, V V S Laxman, has already been, curiously, left out for all the one-dayers. West Indies, on the other hand, are hoping for another come-from-behind victory, the way they did in the Test series which they won 2-1 after trailing 0-1.
West Indies showed a sharp dip in their performance, especially in their batting department, with only skipper Carl Hooper and Ramnaresh Sarwan able to carry forward their stupendous form of the Test series. The biggest disappointment for the West Indies was Shivnarine Chanderpaul, the hero of the Test series, who was run out after making only five runs.
In all probability, Chanderpaul, who came at No 6 in the previous game, would be promoted in the batting order to provide him better opportunity. “I think when the guy is playing so well, you have got to give him every opportunity to reach the crease early,” Hooper said.
“We have got to look at Chanderpaul’s form and find the best slot for him to fit in. At No 6, he doesn’t get the opportunity,” he said. West Indian bowling also lacked the sting that it had in the Test series, and though there was no official word as yet, there may be a few changes in the home team.
Former captain Jimmy Adams felt there should be one more bowler in the West Indian team and said improper team selection was the reason for their downfall in Bridgetown. “They are definitely going to have a look at the composition of the team. I think they had one batsmen too many in the previous match,” he said.
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