India vs West Indies 2nd ODI

Sabina Park, Kingston, Jamaica will be the venue on Sunday, June 28, 2009 for the Second ODI between West Indies and India.

When India came here in 2006, they had a mixed bag of results. They won the test series 1-0 but lost the ODI series to the hosts 4-1.

There is no Sachin Tendulkar, Sehwag, Raina and Zaheer Khan in the Indian squad, but still the team looks strong. West Indies surprisingly did not include Lendl Simmons and Darren Sammy in the playing squad. However, there is a new entrant, Darren Bravo, the younger sibling of Dwayne. Fidel Edwards will miss the 2 ODIs owing to his back injury and this certainly weakens the string.

India have also had time to beef-up their personnel for the four-match series to mitigate against the injuries which have robbed them of star batting duo Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, the latter of whom was sorely missed in the World Twenty20, plus Zaheer Khan and Suresh Raina.

Now ranked as the third-best ODI side in the World, India will see this as a chance to leapfrog Australia, and take aim at chart-toppers South Africa, setting the stage for another invigorating series.

India hasn’t played an ODI series since they prevailed in New Zealand in March, but they have lost only three of their last 18 matches, and have emerged as one of strongest ODI sides over the last year.

But they face a West Indies side with their own demons to exorcise, following a miserable Test and ODI series against England.

The home team, however, marginally redeemed themselves with a semi-final place in the World Twenty20 in which they beat England to reach the final four.