Little quality or experience, Windies face an uphill task
TALL ORDER There are only five players in the Caribbean squad who have played a Test in India
MUMBAI: If Afghanistan had not toured this year for their maiden Test in Bengaluru, the West Indies team captained by Jason Holder would perhaps have been one of the most inexperienced to tour India in recent times.
In the 15-player squad that will play the two-Test series starting at Rajkot on October 4, only five players have prior experience of playing Tests in India. And only two of them were part of the last tour in 2013-14.
Devendra Bishoo, Kraigg Brathwaite, Kieran Powell, Kemar Roach and Shannon Gabriel have played Test in India. Powell and Gabriel are the only survivors from the previous visit.
The 32-year-old leg-spinner Bishoo is the oldest in a squad that has only two others — pacers Kemar Roach and Shannon Gabriel — in their 30s.
The squad with an average age of 25 has none who has played 50 Tests. Brathwaite, the most experienced, is one short of the mark. Brathwaite has 3263 runs at an average of 37.94, but no other batsman has even 2,000 runs, making the batting unit brittle with spinners R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav lying in wait.
However, Windies will hope Shai Hope, 24, the Barbados batsman, stands up. It was his 147 and 118 not out that lifted the team to a sensational win over England at Leeds last year.
West Indies’ bowling hopes will lie on their fast bowlers, given that the touring party has only two specialist spinners, Bishoo and left-arm spinner Jomel Warrican, who has played only four Tests and aims to make a comeback after two years.
Roach joined the team late in India, but the leading wickettaker for West Indies is their best weapon alongside an in-form Gabriel, who bagged 20 wickets in this year’s five home Tests – 12 in three matches against Sri Lanka and eight in two games against Bangladesh.
West Indies will also hope captain Jason Holder’s bowling form is somewhere near what it was against Bangladesh, when he claimed 16 wickets.
BRATHWAITE LEADS BATTING
Brathwaite’s current form is promising. He topped the aggregates against Sri Lanka (288 runs at 57.60) and Bangladesh (239 runs at 79.66 with two centuries). But top-order batsman Kieran Powell last scored a Test century in 2012 and has only two fifties since. Spin-bowling all-rounder Roston Chase — the first since Garry Sobers to take a five-for and score a century in a Test — will be a vital cog in the side.