Ind vs WI: Listless batting display showed India wasn't up for the game

Well that didn’t go according to plan. Home cooking was supposed to revitalise this India team. After a torrid time in England, their batsmen were supposed to gorge on flat decks and small grounds. Instead, it was the West Indies that seemed right at home while a listless India barely registered a fight in losing by124 runs. Suresh Raina, who was the leading man in the one-day series in India, was bowled for a duck. Virat Kohli still can’t get his bat to come down in a straight line and was caught in the slips for two. Even Marlon Samuels, who is banned from bowling his faster delivery because of a suspect action, took two wickets with his rather innocuous offspin. Samuels and left-arm spinner Sulieman Benn, who was only flown in as last-minute replacement for Sunil Narine, combined to take 2 for 26 from eight overs. This after India’s spinners were at their hospitable best in giving away 144 runs from 22 overs. [caption id=“attachment_1748837” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Dhoni and his batsmen just didn’t get their act together. PTI[/caption] What made it all the more surprising is this West Indies team appeared to be in disarray before a ball had been bowled. Until the morning of the match, it wasn’t certain we would have a series at all after the players threatened to strike over a pay dispute between the players and the West Indies Cricket Board. In the end, they decided to show up on the cricket field but their captain Dwayne Bravo made it clear in a letter to the West Indies Player’s Association that all was rather less than well. “The players here in India are under tremendous stress and the team morale is at an all-time low.” The pay dispute was the second of a one-two combination to the West Indian gut. Before the tour even began, Sunil Narine was spirited away to the safety of the Caribbean after being reported for an illegal action in the Champions League T20. That gave rise to conspiracy theories about how India didn’t want to face Narine in the ODI series. The visitors also lost both their tour games to India ‘A’ and haven’t won an ODI series in India for 12 years. . Given all that, perhaps India were a touch complacent and took the West Indies lightly. MS Dhoni and company are used to having their own way at home and often chase down scores over 300 as easily as you or I might chase down a fresh lime soda on hot summer’s day. At the post-match presentation ceremony, Dhoni said the 321 was a par score on this small Kochi ground. “At the start of the match if we were given 320-odd we should have got it,” Dhoni said. That they didn’t come close, and Dhoni, Virat and Raina all failed to reach double figures, suggests India were the side that weren’t up for the game rather than their opponents. It was a strange, disjointed batting performance that suggested some of the players were just going through the motions (not altogether surprising when you consider Dhoni has been playing cricket practically non-stop since the IPL began in April). After this thrashing though, you can bet Ravi Shastri, India’s new cricket czar, will let the team know in no uncertain terms that this sort of performance is unacceptable. How well India respond to the marker West Indies have laid down will be clear in three days time in Delhi.