Tony Becca
THE FOURTH match of the Digicel one-day series between West Indies and India takes place at Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain today and, after starting as the underdogs, the home team can wrap up the five-match contest with a victory.
After losing the first match with one delivery to spare, the West Indies bounced back to win the next two - one by one run with two deliveries to spare; the other with one delivery to spare - and are now in a position where they can not only win the contest, but do so in style.
Regardless of when they do it, if they do it, victory for West Indies today or on Sunday will set off a celebration not seen in the West Indies since they surprised everyone and won the ICC Champions Trophy almost two years ago.
CHANGES
Going into the fourth match, however, the West Indies have made one change with Sew-narine Chattergoon replacing Runako Morton.
They have been forced to make another with Wavell Hinds replacing the injured Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and although, certainly in the case of Chanderpaul, that may affect the batting of the team, with the ICC Champions Trophy and the World Cup to come, it may be a wonderful opportunity to do a little experimenting - especially that, win or lose, there are those who now believe that with a little luck the two-time former champions can win the World Cup.
PLAYERS NEEDED
( L - R ) SAMUELS, BRAVO and SMITH
In order to win the World Cup, the West Indies will need at least five solid batsmen, at least three specialist bowlers, a number of batsmen who can bowl and a few bowlers who can bat.
Looking around they do have those type of players - especially when it comes to batsmen who can bowl in the limited overs version of the game.
Apart from Gayle, the batsmen who can bowl are Dwayne Bravo, Marlon Samuels and Dwayne Smith.
With Christopher Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Brian Lara and Chanderpaul expected to occupy four of the five batting places, with someone else to open the innings with Gayle, with three specialist bowlers and a wicketkeeper, that leaves only two places, however.
The problem is how to get all three into the XI so that the team will have seven bowlers on call - probably five pacers and two slow bowlers, and eight batsmen - including the wicketkeeper.
One way to accommodate the three without weakening the team would be to open the innings with Chanderpaul - a move that would enable the team to play a line-up of Gayle and Chanderpaul, Sarwan, Lara, Samuels, Bravo and Smith, the wicketkeeper and three specialist bowlers.
OPTIONS
This would be a move that, especially on a day when things are not going well for his bowlers, would leave the captain with a lot of options; a move that would leave the team with a number of attacking batsmen.
With Chanderpaul out of action, today is as good a day as any to play the three all-rounders in the middle of the order and see what happens.
That may just be what the doctored ordered - not only for winning today's match and the series against India, but also for winning the World Cup.
