A resurgent West Indies team, under some inspiring captaincy by Brian Lara won the fourth one-dayer at the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad and with it, also won the one-day series with one match still left to be played. This is Lara’s third tenure as the West Indies skipper and it looks like it might be the best as he prepares to bid adieu to international cricket in the none-too-distant future. The way he handled the spinners and rotated his bowlers was tremendous and not only did it leave the Indians with little clue as to what to expect next but also did not allow them to settle down and mark a particular bowler for attack, as is commonly done in limited-overs cricket.
The Indians have shown again that if there is no substantial contribution from their captain then they are not able to put up a decent total. Dravid continuing to open the batting, left early, as did his deputy Sehwag, and with Raina also falling cheaply, the Indians were under severe pressure even before the powerplays were done with. Yuvraj, back in the team after missing the previous game, showed his class with a strokeful half-century, and though Kaif batted quite confidently, it wasn’t at the rate where the bowlers were under any pressure.
Having been retained in the side after a poor run of scores, it’s understandable that he is looking to cement a place for himself and now that he has three scores in the 60s, it may be a good idea to have him at number three, that’s if Dravid continues to open the batting. That India had four wickets down as they went into the last five overs and still got only 216 shows how tied down they were by the West Indies. Lara’s tactics of using his part-time spinners Gayle and Samuels in tandem worked as they both bowled almost full-length deliveries that did not give Dhoni any room to play his big shots. With Kaif looking for ones, the scoring trickled, and thus India did not have the finishing punch that could have taken the score towards 240 or more. Dhoni did try, but in the end, he too was left helpless by the clever length of the West Indian bowlers.
The ease with which the West Indians got to their target showed that even 250 would not have been enough, and this time it was the skipper who did the scoring, ensuring that his adoring home-crowd got to see some sparkling strokeplay. He has said that these two matches could well be his last at the Queen’s Park Oval and so he wanted to do something special to leave some great memories. That it also helped his team to win the game was an added bonus. He danced down the pitch to the spinners and then lay in wait as they predictably shortened their length and then either pulled or late cut for runs. It was a wonderful exhibition of footwork and showed that there are still lots of runs left in his bat.
The West Indies also have a top player in Bravo who is not only one of the very best bowlers at the ‘death’, but is also an outstanding fielder and a strokeplayer as a batsman. It was his match as he first bowled the slower delivery to good effect and then batted with no fears and took the team to a win.
Wavell Hinds also took the opportunity to get a few runs under his belt and that does not augur too well for the Indians.
There’s still one game left and India will no doubt want to win that, so as to go in with confidence in the four-Test series to follow, and seeing how the West Indies have reassembled, they know that it won’t be as easy as it looked when they left Indian shores.
