KHURRAM HABIB

While India arrived here as a fractured and harried lot, thanks to Anil Kumble’s resignation and the thrashing by Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final overshadowing an extremely successful season, the hosts too are living on the edge.

On Tuesday, the whole of Port-of-Spain (POS) was drenched in rain with a fierce storm hitting the Capital city of Trinidad and Tobago. POS will host the first two ODIs in a hastily-organised series that was being seen as giving a lifeline to cricket in the Caribbean which has suffered not just due to poor performances of its team -- most recently a loss to Afghanistan -but also the tussle between the players and the board that saw the team pull out of a tour of India in 2014.

That pullout led to financial losses and subsequently the boards are doing their best to minimise the impact.

But such a series, especially at the end of a long and tiring summer for India, is being seen as meaningless, especially with this being the rainy season.

Normally in such a series, the board would have sent a secondstring side or a largely main side but with someone other than Virat Kohli. It has happened before on tours of Zimbabwe and once recently to West Indies.

But big names and big faces is what attracts crowds, keep sponsors smiling and Cricket West