India A tour of West Indies - An Analysis

As Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman have entered the twilight period of their career and India’s go-to man for past two decades, Rahul Dravid has retired recently, India A’s tour of West Indies was considered as a conspicuous chance for budding first class cricketers to storm their way in to the test team. Players like Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Manoj Tiwari, Ajinkya Rahane were all on radar, as their performance on this tour would better their chance of debuting for India in whites in the void left by Dravid in India’s top order.

The tour was scheduled to have 3 4-day Test matches, 2 T20Is and 3 ODIs. Cheteshwar Pujara led India A in all forms.

Winning matches away from the sub-continent have been difficult for India lately. Even India A had found it difficult to win matches. Rohit Sharma’s jubilant innings of 94 saw India A (252) getting a slender lead over West Indies A (277) in their first innings. Chasing 186 runs for victory, India A’s chase was cut short by Holder’s 5-for. However, Skipper Pujara(96*) did a Laxman-Ishant with Shami Ahmed by building a 83 run partnership and taking India A home. Rahane failed to contribute to his team’s cause and so did Dhawan and Mukund.

The second and third test match was fully dominated by West Indies A. However, some notable efforts by skipper Pujara (67), Shahmi Ahmed (4/48) and Akshay Darekar (6/67) in second test and by Manoj Tiwari (62) and Wridhiman Saha (52) in third test would have surely bought some attention from the selection committee.

The T20 and ODI series didn’t go in India’s way either. Rohit Sharma’s lone 52 marked a India A comeback in the first T20 game which was completely dominated by the West Indies A side. Rahane’s fluent (76) was aided by Dinda’s last over heroics in the 2nd T20 game, which resulted in a tie and match went to a one-over eliminator which was won by India.

The first ODI was a last over thriller. India A batsmen failed to convert their starts into a big score barring Rahane who scored 50 odd runs. Despite his innings, India ended up scoring 190 runs only. West Indies was always in the chase through out the entire match and eventually won by 2 wickets. Akshay Darekar’s 4-for in the second ODI won the game for India A, while the third ODI was completely abandoned without a single ball being bowled due to rain.

In a abysmal series, India A just managed 3 victories – one in each format – of which only the ODI victory was purely dominant. Players like Pujara and Rohit were amidst runs right from the beginning of the tour while the likes of Rahane came good only in the later half of the tour. However, domestic players like Dhawan and Mukund had a indifferent tour as they weren’t among the significant scores; especially Dhawan whose form in IPL was antithesis to that of in West Indies. Failing doesn’t mean they have less potential than others.Virender Sehwag came in support for those who failed to score runs in this tour. He quoted, “Some people get runs on this kind of tours and some don’t. That does not mean that those who fail are not good enough. The best part is that you can make mistakes and learn from it, try to rectify in your domestic cricket and come back stronger.“

There is a lot of potential in these players and sooner or later, we can definitely expect a few of them to represent India in test cricket.