K. R. Deepak
As India takes on West Indies for the second ODI in Vishakapatnam, there are a lot of questions left unanswered by the Indian team. West Indies beat India comfortably by 8 wickets in the 1st ODI held in Chennai riding on the special batting performances from Shimron Hetmyer and Shai Hope. Indian bowlers found it difficult to trouble the Windies batsmen in the otherwise bowler-friendly Chepauk pitch.
Team India received a lot of criticism concerning their playing eleven in the last match. Virat Kohli opted to go in with 3 all-rounders thereby diluting India’s bowling unit which was already deprived of the services of ace bowlers Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah due to injury. With Vishakapatnam expected to be a batsmen friendly wicket and considering India’s poor bowling performance in the last match, they are expected to make few changes to their playing eleven.
Here we bring you 2 changes that ViratKohli could make to the playing eleven in 2nd ODI.
With India losing all their last 4 home ODI’s, the team would consider bringing back the once successful Jodi of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzuvendra Chahal. India had been playing only one of these wrist spin twins in their last few matches to boost their batting, but with Shreyas Iyer and Rishab Pant finding form and considering the consistency of India’s top 3, the team would think of dropping an all-rounder, possibly ShivamDube who was hit for plenty to bring back Chahal. India also has a high win rate when these two play together. So there is a high possibility that India will go back to their once successful spin twins.
Though an unlikely change considering Virat’s love for 6 bowling options, it’s worth considering Manish Pandey who had an amazing domestic season in place of Kedar Jadhav. He had been warming the bench for quite a few matches and with this bilateral series not having any major significance the team may consider giving him a chance in the playing eleven.
Can India break their 4 match losing streak in home soil? Or will Windies once again march to victory? One thing is for sure it’ll be a run-fest in Vishakapatnam.
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