India will take on the West Indies on Saturday in the first of the two T20 international to be played in Central Broward Regional Park, Florida.
The last time the two teams fought each other, India went down to the Windies in the semi-finals of the world T20 held in India in March. The Caribbean team went on to lift the trophy.
This will be India’s first International cricket match against the West Indies to be played in the US.
The Windies will be led by their new T20 skipperCarlos Braithwaite — who comes in place of the sacked ex-captain Darren Sammy — and whose exploits in the World T20 took the Windies home in a nail biting finals against England.
Revenge will be on mind for the Indian lads, especially for the likes of aggressive Virat Kohli, after his impressive Man of the Series performance went in vain as Sammy’s merry men threw them out of the series.
The Indians are coming into the T20 tournament on a high after a 2-0 series test win against the Carribeans.
Both the sides go in with a very strong lineup.
In the Indian team, Mohammed Shami, KL Rahul,Stuart Binny and Amith Mishra have managed to space whereas the so-called World cup specialists Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra have been dropped.
T20 specialist Kieron Pollard makes it into the Windies 13-man squad as the likes of Sulaimann Benn do not find a place in the shrunk squad.
With Pollard joining the likes of hard hitting Gayle, Charles, Braithwaite and Russel, the West Indies look a perfect T20 batting lineup with Simmons, Fletcher and Samuels capable playing the anchoring role in Cricket’s shortest format.
Windies will be having a slight advantage over India, having already played against New Zealand at this venue, which is one of the only dedicated stadiums for Cricket in the USA.
Missing out also would be India ‘A’ captain Manish Pandey who is presently leading the side in a quadrangular series down under.
The series would again be a test of India’s batting “class” against the Windies “power play”.
The pitch conditions will have to to be seen as it is going to be artificial one while the officials are expecting a crowd of around 16,000.
West Indies Line-up: Carlos Brathwaite (Capt), Andre Fletcher, Andre Russell, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Evin Lewis, Jason Holder, Johnson Charles, Kieron Pollard, Lendl Simmons, Marlon Samuels, Samuel Badree, Sunil Narine.
Indian Line-up: MS Dhoni (Capt), Ajinkya Rahane, Amit Mishra, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Stuart Binny, Umesh Yadav, Virat Kohli.