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BRIDGETOWN: West Indies sunk to a demoralising five-wicket defeat against India in the first One-day International on Thursday in Barbados, after left-arm spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja demolished their batting.
The Caribbean side’s struggles in the format continued when Kuldeep ended with the flattering figures of four for six from three overs and Jadeja supported with three for 37 from six overs.
The Windies were dismissed for 114 in 23 overs after being sent in to bat. They still had 27 overs left available when the last wicket fell.
WI captain Shai Hope led his side’s batting with 43 and Alick Athanaze made 22, but no other batsman reached 20, and most of them were undone by the variations from Kuldeep’s wrist spin and Jadeja’s finger spin on an unpredictable Kensington Oval pitch.
Left-arm spinner Gudakesh Motie and leg-spinner Yannic Cariah caused a few anxious moments for the Indian batsmen, but once wicketkeeper-opener Ishan Kishan slammed seven fours and one six in 52 from 46 balls, there was never any doubt about the result.
West Indies were gifted a few cheap wickets before Indian captain Rohit Sharma formalised the result with 163 balls remaining when he swung a delivery from Motie to the deep mid-wicket boundary for his second four.
The result meant the Caribbean side trail 0-1 in the three-match series, which continues on Saturday at the same venue.
Hope bemoaned the unpredictable nature of the pitch and the team’s lack of adequate preparation for his side’s lopsided loss, which comes on the heels of their failure to qualify for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 in India in October – the first time West Indies will be missing from the global showpiece.
“It was a tough day ‘at the office’,” Hope said.
“We didn’t start well, but we fought back in the end and so I must commend the guys for the effort that they showed in the field, but runs on the board is always runs on the board, and we didn’t have enough.
Before a sparse crowd, West Indies ended the first Power Play on 52 for three after opener Kyle Mayers was caught at mid-on off pacer Hardik Pandya for two, from a miscued pull in the third over.
Fellow left-hander Athanaze was caught at backward point off pacer Mukesh Kumar in the eighth over, and the other opener Brandon King was bowled by Shardul Thakur for 17 in the next over.
A stand of 43 between Hope and the returning Shimron Hetmyer carried the Caribbean side to the threshold of 100 before things fell apart, and they lost their last seven wickets – all to the two left-arm spinners – for 26 in the span of 45 balls.
Hetmyer started the slide when Jadeja bowled him behind his back for 11, trying an ill-advised sweep, and the wickets of Rovman Powell for four and Romario Shepherd for a second-ball duck in three balls to slip catches off the same bowler had them underwater.
The West Indies batting was further torpedoed when Kuldeep bamboozled the rest of the batting, including Hope lbw in the 23rd over, playing an irresponsible reverse sweep, before Jayden Seales was caught at leg-slip for a third-ball duck to bring the innings to a close.
Seales got an early breakthrough for the home team when they took the field, and he got Shubman Gill caught at second slip for seven in the fourth over.
Motie and Cariah struck in between a volley of strokes from the Indian batsmen led by Kishan, but the visitors hardly broke a sweat in an audition for their younger batting aspirants ahead of the World Cup.
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