India to play for pride, Windies plan to rub salt to wound

Port of Spain, May 27 (UNI) With the series already in the hosts' pocket, India will play to salvage some of the lost pride while the West Indies plan to rub salt to the visitors' wound in the final ODI of the five-match series here tomorrow.

The Team India juggernaut has been brought to a screaming halt by the underdogs and host captain Brian Lara has gone public saying he would like to win the match with fringe players, thus completing the humiliation.

Arriving here with an aura and formidable track record, the Men in Blue began the series on a winning note but that proved a false dawn in the Caribbean islands and the hosts showed tremendous resilience, winning three matches in a row to walk away with the series with one game to spare.

With Lara in the saddle, West Indies found a new self-belief with the 5-0 whitewash of Zimbabwe and losing the series opener could not dampen their spirit.

Heydays of the West Indian pace attack is part of the lore but the current phalanx of wobbly dobbers proved enough to tame the much-celebrated Indian batting line-up.

India's top order has been all promise and no performance and Virender Sehwag's 96 in the third one dayer proved a mere flash in the pan.

Rahul Dravid, opening with the Delhi bat has not yielded result and Irfan Pathan seemed to have arrived here without his batting skills.

Yuvraj Singh remains the bright patch in an otherwise gloomy canvas while his middle order twin Mohammad Kaif looks sincere.

Quite surprisingly, Mahendra Singh Dhoni never got enough overs to play while the five-bowler theory came a cropper against the West Indies batting.

West Indies, on the other hand, played like a cohesive unit, something the islanders can take pride in.

Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan proved the batting mainstay for the hosts and in the nick of time, Lara returned to form with a match-winning 69 that was instrumental in deciding the fate of the entire series.

And Team India coach Greg Chapell was forced to swallow his words - that West Indies doesn't know how to win a match -- after Lara revealed that the snide remark spurred his side to win the match.

Though Chappell described the series defeat as a 'nice wake up call', it left a dent in Team India pride and coming from a team languising at the lower rungs of the ICC table, the loss would surely rankle Dravid and his men.

Squads (From) India : Virender Sehwag, Robin Uthappa, Rahul Dravid (capt) Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, Venugopal Rao, MS Dhoni (wk), Irfan Pathan, Ramesh Powar, Harbhajan Singh, Ajit Agarkar, S Sreesanth, R P Singh, Munaf Patel.

West Indies: Brian Lara (capt), Chris Gayle, Sewnarine Chattergoon, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Smith, Dwayne Bravo, Carlton Baugh (wk), Corey Collymore, Fidel Edwards, Jerome Taylor, Ian Bradshaw, Dave Mohammed.

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