following them after a month break Defeated by Australia in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) finalRohit Sharma’s men are back on the road. A new WTC cycle is starting and even though the final is scheduled in England in 2025, the first step will begin when India take on West Indies in the first of the two-Test series at Windsor Park in Roseau from Wednesday. caribbean tour It also includes three ODIs and five T20Is and provides an opportunity for the changing squad to test whether the youngsters have the ability to replace their seniors who have been hit by the weather. During West Indies’ heyday, there were flashes of greatness during his tenure there, such as Sunil Gavaskar’s 774 in his debut series in 1971. Currently, the West Indies are a pale shadow of their former self. Barring sporadic brilliance in T20Is, this is a unit that rekindles nostalgia with faltering performances. The players in Kraigg Brathwaite’s Test team need to punch above their weight against a strong opponent. Failure to qualify for the traditional 50-over World Cup to be held in India later this year is another blemish the Caribbeans need to rectify.
If recovering lost glory is a difficult task for the host, the visitor will have to find a way forward in the meantime. The wind of change that swept away Cheteshwar Pujara is still in the air and there is an opportunity for people like Yashasvi Jaiswal to prove that they belong at the highest level. Pujara replaced Rahul Dravid at number three and Virat Kohli replaced Sachin Tendulkar at number four, a position that Indian cricket held for almost a decade. And now that Pujara is out and Kohli is nearing dusk, the team management needs to get the crucial aspects in order. Rohit, Ajinkya Rahane, Kohli, R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja are together in their mid-thirties, which means a change is inevitable. The fact that Rohit and Kohli didn’t find a place in the T20 squad under Hardik Pandya indicates that the selectors may remain indifferent. With the ICC T20 World Cup to be held in the West Indies and the United States next year, Pandya’s men will get a preview of the state of the game. Be it the batsmen or the bowlers led by spearhead Mohammad Siraj, the coming weeks will provide an opportunity to move forward and instill hope. It helps that the rivals are searching for equally important answers.