West Indies V India T20I: Back-up Indian Side Begin West Indian Tour With T20

The World Cup champions India will play their first ever international series after lifting the World Cup when they begin the tour of the West Indies with the one-off T20I. The West Indies-India T20I will be played at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

The sheen will obviously be taken off the game by the fact that the Indian side will be depleted of their main guys. Suresh Raina will captain the Indian team while Harbhajan Singh gets his first opportunity to deputize for him. It is the remaining slots that bear a deserted look.

There is no Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Zaheer Khan to go with the absence of MS Dhoni from the limited overs squad. Their places have been taken by the likes of S Badrinath, Shikhar Dhawan, Manoj Tiwary and Rohit Sharma, all of whom will be itching to prove a point or two to the selectors. Parthiv Patel will don the gloves.

The bowling bears a deserted look as well but in Ishant Sharma, Praveen Kumar and Munaf Patel, they should be well-served.

West Indies, despite their own absences of Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo are a similar squad that had beaten Pakistan a month or so ago. They will hardly be pushovers.

Darren Sammy has copped a lot of criticism in the recent past but has done well in the longer formats of the game. How he responds in the T20I will be important, not only for him but for his team as well.

Marlon Samuels will be the one player to look out for the West Indian side. He had done well in the past before involvement in match-fixing, ironically in India itself, sent him packing for a couple of years. He comes back with a chance to redeem himself. Darren Bravo will look to build on his recent starts while Lendl Simmons will be the wicket to capture early.

Krishmar Santokie will join the squad as the 12th man.

India will play West Indies in one-off T20I at Port of Spain on June 4. The India-West Indies T20I will begin at 10.00 am local time or 1930 hours IST.