Raina’s India gets ready for the bench press

West Indian great Viv Richards never watched Sir Donald Bradman bat but among all the batsmen he has watched, including compatriot Brian Lara, no one comes close to the iconic Indian, Sachin Tendulkar.

“I didn’t see Don but to me, in all my years associated with the game, I haven’t seen a better batsman than Sachin Tendulkar,” said Richards about the master batsman. “If there is a better batsman than Sachin then he hasn’t arrived yet.”

And for all his West Indian fans, he might never arrive in the Caribbean again either. Ever.

A one-off Twenty20 international in Barbados on Saturday signals the start of the Indian tour of the Caribbean, but they will hardly resemble the side that claimed the World Cup to spark off wild celebrations in Mumbai.

For stand-in skipper Raina that is the boon as well as the curse. The left-hander knows that he has some very capable players in the shorter format but in the absence of the veterans, the West Indies are not going to shake in their boots at the prospect of facing the world champions.

At the end of the day, this tour is all about building for the future. For a long time, the main worry for the BCCI has been having players good enough to take over from the likes of Sachin, Zaheer Khan, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.

“You can tell if it is the start of a dynasty when the bench strength is equally strong. To my mind, India has a very good pool of young cricketers,” said Richards when he was asked what he thought about India’s second string.

The reason why West Indies and Australia were able to build very strong sides that dominated international cricket for decades was simply because they had quality replacements every time one of their top players opted out because of injury or personal reasons.

For every Shane Warne, Australia had a Stuart MacGill waiting on the sidelines and that’s what made them powerful. They actually had a rotational policy in place when others could only dream about it.

Raina and Virat Kohli lead the batting with good support from the likes of Rohit Sharma, S Badrinath, Manoj Tiwary, Wriddhiman Saha and wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel. It looks like a batting line-up straight out of the Challenger Trophy but there’s no use complaining because that’s what coach Duncan Fletcher and Co have to make do with.

The bowling, though, is where the real worry is. With the exception of R Ashwin, the others like Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma and Vinay Kumar didn’t have a great time in the Indian Premier League and aren’t expected to push the West Indies too much.

Of course, it helps that the likes of Chris Gayle, who set the IPL on fire, aren’t playing. The Indian team isn’t going to take it easy, at least that’s the plan according to Harbhajan Singh.

“We are a good side and if we play to our potential we can come out very strong,” he said. “We don’t want to take them lightly because they have some quality players.”

The onus on beating the West Indians will be totally on the Indians and hopefully, the young outfit can put the non-stop cricket behind them and come out tops. But at the back of their minds, they will also know that a bad performance could consign them to the wilderness of Ranji Trophy for another year. With tours of England and Australia coming up, no one will want to do that.