3 Reasons why Team India lost to Windies in the 1st ODI

Windies crushed India in the 1st ODI of the series, to go 1-0 up in the three-match ODI series on Sunday.

Batting first, India lost star-studded top order cheaply and posted a total of 287 runs, which was considered to be a good total on this wicket. Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer scored 71 and 70 runs respectively. Kedar Jadhav also played well for his 35 balls 40 and Jadeja scored run a ball 21.

Windies chased the target down with ease thanks to the centuries from Shimron Hetmyer and Shai Hope, who made 218 runs between them for the 2nd wicket. Hetmyer scored a blistering 139 from 106 balls which included 11 fours and 7 sixes.

So, what went bad for India? Here, we look at the 3 major reasons Windies crushed India in the 1st ODI:

Poor team selection

India’s team selection was poor in this match. They played with only 4 full-time bowlers in Deepak Chahar, Mohammed Shami, Kuldeep Yadav, and Ravindra Jadeja, and Shivam Dube and Kedar Jadhav to assist them and it backfired. Also, the decision to bench Yuzvendra Chahal was very shocking as well because India felt the need of the 5th frontline bowler and Chahal is a proven wicket-taker.

None of the bowlers were able to make the Windies batsman uncomfortable and they just kept on scoring.

Ideally, Chahal should have played instead of Jadeja or Dube. We played two, “3-4” over bowlers as the fifth bowler and that what the major reason that we lost this game.

Assessing the conditions

Before the start of the match, everyone, including the experts, said that this pitch will slow up as the game progresses, and when Pollard decided to bowl first Virat said that he was very shocked at that decision. But, credit to the Windies team as they assessed the pitch and the conditions better than us and were well prepared.

They knew that there will be dew in the latter half of the match and it would be difficult for the bowlers especially the spinners. They came on the field with a plan and executed it perfectly.

Their bowlers bowled the way it was required on this wicket and they were deservingly better.

Poor fielding

India’s fielding surprisingly is not up to the mark in this series. Indian fielders are dropping catches, doing misfields, and over-throws which allow the batsman to rotate the strike and pressure don’t build. Yesterday Iyer dropped a dolly of Hetmyer on the long-on boundary and if he had taken the catch India could have been back in the game.

There were also a couple of misfields too that didn’t help either. India should improve their catching if they have to come back in the series, as it’s very rightly said that, “catches win matches”.

So these were the 3 reasons India lost to the Windies in the 1st ODI of the series.

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