India looks for fresh start against Windies as New WTC Cycle Begins

After a stumble at the final hurdle of the World Test Championship (WTC), Team India is all set to rekindle the race for the Test mace again in West Indies from Wednesday. The two sides meet after a gap of 4 years in the longest format of the game and while it is a contest between two sides at the opposite end of Test rankings, both have a lot to gain from the 2-test series followed by 3 ODIs and 5 T20 games.

As they prepare for the challenge, it’s not been a happy few weeks for both Team India and the Windies side. While India lost the second WTC finals in a row, the two-time World Champions, West Indies, failed to qualify for the ODI World Cup to be held in India later this year. It is ironic that post the historic 1983 World Cup victory, one which was celebrated just a fortnight ago as the 40th year that ‘changed the game’, the two teams have had a drastic swing in their cricketing fortunes.

When India lifted the 1983 World Cup, it was deemed a miracle as they had beaten the mighty West Indians who won the previous two editions comfortably. But since then, the rise and fall of the two sides has been quite dramatic and now as India play in the Caribbean islands, the odds are heavily stacked in their favor to win another Test series and anything less than a 2-0 victory will be seen as an upset!

The striking statistic is that India has not been beaten by Windies in Test matches since 2002! This is more than 21 years without a win and the last 8 series between the two, have all been comprehensively won by Team India. The second Test of the series will be the 100th between the two teams of which the Windies have won 30 and India 22. But in the last 17 Tests since 2006, India has won 12 and drawn the rest, pushing their winning percentage against Windies much higher!

Poor administration and management have led to this terrible downfall for Windies cricket in the last few decades. But Kraigg Brathwaite, the current Windies captain, wants to look ahead and start with a fresh mindset against India. He claims his players understand the challenge and has urged Caribbean cricket fans to come to the matches in large numbers and support their team. At the moment, West Indies players are preparing in a training camp but the selectors are yet to announce the Test squad!

The Indian team is expected to dominate the contests but they have problems of their own. While BCCI is the richest board in the world and Team India has often topped ICC rankings across formats, World Championship Trophies have been missing from their cabinet for the past decade. Poor selection calls have been heavily criticised by experts. Sunil Gavaskar had recently said that dropping Chesteshwar Pujara from the Test side after a poor WTC final was just seeking a “scapegoat” for collective batting failures.

Moreover, a surprising decision, one that bemused many, was taken when Ajinkya Rahane was made the Vice Captain of the Test team once again. He was the highest run scorer in the WTC finals but had been out of the team for the last 18 months! Sourav Ganguly was displeased by this wavering criteria, terming it as “hot and cold” and called for consistency in selections. On the bowling side, though the spin department manned by R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja looks classy, the pacers, except for Mohammed Siraj are a rather untried bunch and seem far from menacing.

The Rohit Sharma-led outfit reached the Caribbean 10 days before the start of the Test series. For the Tests, India has picked three newcomers in Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Mukesh Kumar. While Jaiswal and Gaikwad are big IPL names, Mukesh is a medium pacer who has played an important part for Bengal in the last few seasons. But yet again the mantle of the batting will fall on proven stalwarts like Virat and Rohit. Their batting form holds the key for India to do well not in this series but also for the rest of the year.

Having got the desired time to acclimatize to the conditions and prepare well, the Indian side would be determined to start the new WTC cycle on a high. They will look to get 2 wins under their belt for this WTC cycle may be a challenging one for them. But as is often said, “well begun is half done.” In that sense the battle with the Windies will be vital for Team India to get off to a splendid start!

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE PERSONAL

Siddhaarth Mahan The writer is a specialist on Sports and Cinema who works as an actor in the Hindi film industry