The West In­dies have touched down in In­dia for a gru­elling white-ball tour con­sist­ing of three One Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODIs) and five Twen­ty20s (T20s). Tour­ing In­dia is like vol­un­tar­i­ly step­ping in­to a boil­ing pot of 100,000 scream­ing fans, pitch con­di­tions tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly for your demise, and a home team that op­er­ates with the cold ruth­less­ness of a cor­po­rate con­glom­er­ate.

Say­ing I don’t ex­pect mir­a­cles from the West In­dies isn’t a cri­tique of their raw tal­ent and has noth­ing to do with their abil­i­ty, but more so it is the tough and sea­soned In­di­an team—it’s just ba­sic self-preser­va­tion against re­al­i­ty.

Be­fore the first ball was even bowled, the most re­fresh­ing com­men­tary of the tour didn’t come from a broad­cast­ing booth, but from an in­ter­view with Moeen Ali. Fresh off lead­ing the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Fal­cons (ABF) to CPL glo­ry (where, as I not­ed last week, his tac­ti­cal lead­er­ship was an ab­solute mas­ter­class), the 39-year-old vet­er­an gave a can­did in­ter­view that should be manda­to­ry lis­ten­ing at West In­dies Crick­et Board head­quar­ters.

I know Ali as a good all-round crick­eter in all for­mats of the game, but at 39 years old (he will be 40 on June 18, 2027), there is no doubt he is in the twi­light of his ca­reer. So it was good that he was lead­ing the ABF and pass­ing on his knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence not on­ly to the younger play­ers but to some of the sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als in the team. Cap­tain­cy is an art which does not come eas­i­ly, and Ali showed what it was all about, and un­for­tu­nate­ly we are cry­ing out for good lead­ers at all lev­els in our do­mes­tic crick­et.

Ali didn’t hold back when dis­sect­ing King Sam­my. He point­ed­ly not­ed that while the play­er pool has sup­pos­ed­ly widened, Sam­my’s se­lec­tion strat­e­gy still looks sus­pi­cious­ly like favouritism. The pen­du­lum has sim­ply swung from pre­fer­ring the Tri­ni and Ba­jan boys to hand­ing out free pass­es to St Lu­cians and Guyanese.

De­spite this and even with the wider pool of play­ers, Ali still feels King Sam­my se­lects his favourites rather than the best play­ers. Favouritism in se­lec­tion di­vides a dress­ing room be­fore a ball is even bowled; when a young play­er re­alis­es mer­it takes a back­seat to re­gion­al pol­i­tics, mo­ti­va­tion evap­o­rates. Ali feels that mind­set has to change, and you must unite every­one first and make every­one equal.

Even more damn­ing was Ali re­it­er­at­ing what re­gion­al com­men­ta­tors have been shout­ing in­to the void for years: we sim­ply do not play enough crick­et. You can­not de­vel­op elite in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eters on a star­va­tion di­et of re­duced four-day match­es and ze­ro (0) 50-over crick­et. Maybe be­cause a re­spect­ed for­eign star said it out loud, the suits in CWI might ac­tu­al­ly pay at­ten­tion. We live in hope, but no­body is hold­ing their breath.

Sam­my’s ODI squad was al­ways go­ing to be a spec­u­la­tive guess giv­en the com­plete ab­sence of re­gion­al 50-over crick­et to gauge form. Leav­ing out ex­pe­ri­enced hands like Rov­man Pow­ell or fail­ing to bring promis­ing young­sters like Maven­dra Dindyal and Ja­keem Pol­lard along for the ed­u­ca­tion­al ride felt like mas­sive missed op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Pre­dictably, In­dia claimed the first two ODIs to set up an in­evitable clean sweep. Even with Jasprit Bum­rah, Hardik Pandya, and Mo­hammed Sir­aj tak­ing a breather, In­dia’s bat­ting depth re­mains down­right ter­ri­fy­ing with the likes of Ro­hit Shar­ma, Shub­man Gill, Vi­rat Kohli, Rat­u­raj Gaik­wad, etc. In the first ODI, West In­dies man­aged 295 (a score that should have eas­i­ly been 340) on­ly for In­dia to brush it aside with non­cha­lant ease. In­dia’s bat­ting line-up is for­mi­da­ble in the squad. West In­dies will have to bowl very well to re­strict them to un­der 300 in all the in­nings.

Then came the sec­ond ODI, a match so mind-bend­ing it felt like it be­longed in a video game on easy mode. The West In­dies post­ed a jaw-drop­ping, his­toric 405 runs! John Camp­bell con­tin­ued his ca­reer as a walk­ing enig­ma with a styl­ish knock, Amir Jan­goo firm­ly ce­ment­ed his sta­tus as a per­ma­nent in­ter­na­tion­al fix­ture, and Shai Hope did what Shai Hope grace­ful­ly does.

Post­ing 405 against In­dia in In­dia should guar­an­tee a na­tion­al hol­i­day back home. In­stead, Shub­man Gill ca­su­al­ly pulled out a su­per­nat­ur­al knock, smash­ing a breath­tak­ing 223 not out to lead In­dia past the to­tal with 6 overs to spare. It turns out that not even 405 runs is a safe tar­get when the In­di­an run ma­chine hits top gear.

I might be liv­ing un­der a rock and call my­self an eter­nal op­ti­mist, but I be­lieve the West In­dies will per­form even bet­ter and put up a far stiffer fight in the up­com­ing T20 se­ries. Shim­ron Het­my­er brings much-need­ed mid­dle-or­der dy­na­mite, Kamil Pooran gets a gold­en stage to prove he be­longs at the high­est lev­el, and Quentin Samp­son has pow­er to burn, though his shot se­lec­tion against In­dia’s slow bowlers will be the dif­fer­ence be­tween a match-win­ning half-cen­tu­ry and a walk back to the pavil­ion.

My pri­ma­ry griev­ance with King Sam­my’s T20 squad re­mains the omis­sion of Joshua James. Af­ter his break­out per­for­mance for the Fal­cons, bowl­ing iron-ball overs, clear­ing bound­aries, and throw­ing him­self around the out­field, how does he get left be­hind? Shamar Springer is a ca­pa­ble op­er­a­tor, but James is a gen­uine, hard-hit­ting all-rounder who earned his stripes. Con­verse­ly, leav­ing out young Vi­tel Lawes was ac­tu­al­ly an act of mer­cy; throw­ing the in­ex­pe­ri­enced young­ster against this In­di­an bat­ting line­up in their own back­yard might have scarred him for life.

In­dia will rest Gill, Vi­rat Kohli, Ro­hit Shar­ma, and Bum­rah for the T20s, giv­ing West In­dies a punch­er’s chance. But don’t be fooled by their “B-team.” Their bat­ting card fea­tures Shreyas Iy­er, Is­han Kis­han, San­ju Sam­son, and 15-year-old prodi­gy Vaib­hav Soorya­van­shi, a kid young enough to be do­ing high school home­work be­tween overs, yet ca­pa­ble of rain­ing bound­aries left, right and cen­tre.

WI’s best shot is chas­ing down to­tals, pro­vid­ed the In­di­an top or­der doesn’t rock­et past 260. If they want to sur­vive, the bats­men will need to nav­i­gate the left-arm wrist spin of Kuldeep Ya­dav and the leg-spin of Ravi Bish­noi with­out col­laps­ing like a house of cards.

To cap off a frus­trat­ing week, CWI dropped the stag­ger­ing news that there will be no Su­per50 tour­na­ment in 2026. How on earth do you ex­pect to build a com­pet­i­tive 50-over na­tion­al side when you refuse to play the for­mat do­mes­ti­cal­ly? As Moeen Ali right­ly ob­served, 20 mil­lion West In­di­ans can’t all be wrong, but ap­par­ent­ly the board knows bet­ter.

Fi­nal­ly, my heart grew heavy this week with the pass­ing of the grand­mas­ter him­self, the Mighty Spar­row; the Gar­ry Sobers of Ca­lyp­so. A few columns ago, when we paid trib­ute to Sir Gar­ry, I quot­ed Spar­row’s im­mor­tal 1966 line: “Who’s the great­est crick­eter on Earth or Mars? Any­one can tell you it’s the great Sir Garfield Sobers!” Now, the Birdie has flown home to join Sir Gar­ry in the ul­ti­mate VIP pavil­ion in the sky. What a man, what a ge­nius, what an in­deli­ble sound­track to our lives. I could have lis­tened to the Birdie 365 days a year and nev­er got­ten tired of his bril­liance. May he rest in eter­nal peace, leav­ing be­hind a lega­cy as a clas­sic West In­dies cov­er dri­ve.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.