LAUDER­HILL, Flori­da, USA – West In­dies are hop­ing a change of scenery re­sults in a change of for­tunes when they clash with In­dia in the cru­cial fourth Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al of the five-match se­ries at the Cen­tral Broward Coun­ty Park Sta­di­um to­day.

The hosts flopped spec­tac­u­lar­ly in the open­er at Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Trinidad, los­ing by 68 runs be­fore draw­ing lev­el in the first of two T20Is at Warn­er Park in St Kitts, win­ning by five wick­ets last Mon­day.

In­dia pulled ahead with a sev­en-wick­et win in the sec­ond game of the dou­ble­head­er 24 hours lat­er and West In­dies are cog­nizant an­oth­er de­feat will con­demn them to a fifth se­ries loss on the trot to the Asian pow­er­hous­es.

The Caribbean side has not won at the Unit­ed States venue in six years, los­ing four of their last five T20 In­ter­na­tion­als here with the oth­er game fin­ish­ing in a no re­sult.

But cap­tain Nicholas Pooran said his side was look­ing for­ward to a se­ries-lev­el­ling win at what was a “beau­ti­ful” venue.

“It looks re­al­ly good, to be hon­est. The pitch looks nice to bat on; there’s a nice wind fac­tor as well,” Pooran told me­dia on the eve of the game in south Flori­da.

“It’s a bit hot but I guess we’re ac­cus­tomed to the sun now, but the venue is beau­ti­ful.

“We just need to con­tin­ue do­ing what we have been do­ing in the first cou­ple of games, find­ing ways to win and just un­der­stand­ing when we are in those mo­ments, just fight it out a bit more es­pe­cial­ly with the bat and the ball.

“I think we have been mov­ing for­ward but un­for­tu­nate­ly we haven’t been con­sis­tent in terms of wins.”

West In­dies lost back-to-back T20Is to In­dia here in 2019 and al­so tast­ed de­feat in a sim­i­lar dou­ble­head­er to Bangladesh the pre­vi­ous year.

All told, they have won on­ly 14 of 34 T20Is over the last 20 months, fail­ing to find con­sis­ten­cy as the side has un­der­gone an over­haul, es­pe­cial­ly since the T20 World Cup last Oc­to­ber.

Pooran said he ex­pect­ed per­for­mances to im­prove as play­ers be­come more knowl­edge­able about each oth­er.

“The more games we play as a unit the more it’s go­ing to get bet­ter. You see Kyle (May­ers) is scor­ing half-cen­turies, (Bran­don) King is scor­ing half-cen­turies, I make some runs some­times as well but every­one is play­ing a role in the team,” he ex­plained.

“And it’s not about in­di­vid­u­als, it’s about every­one do­ing ex­act­ly what the team re­quires at that mo­ment and I think we have been do­ing that.

“Again, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we haven’t been get­ting the wins but win­ning and los­ing is con­ta­gious and we know as a team we’re do­ing a lot of right things, and hope­ful­ly even­tu­al­ly we will start to win games.”

The game bowls off at 10:30 am East­ern Caribbean time.

SQUADS

WEST IN­DIES – Nicholas Pooran (cap­tain), Rov­man Pow­ell (vice cap­tain), Shamarh Brooks, Do­minic Drakes, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Ja­son Hold­er, Akeal Ho­sein, Alzarri Joseph, Bran­don King, Kyle May­ers, Obed Mc­Coy, Keemo Paul, Ro­mario Shep­herd, Odean Smith, De­von Thomas, Hay­den Walsh Jr.

IN­DIA – Ro­hit Shar­ma (cap­tain), Is­han Kis­han, KL Rahul, Suryaku­mar Ya­dav, Deep­ak Hoo­da, Shreyas Iy­er, Di­nesh Karthik, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Ravin­dra Jade­ja, Axar Pa­tel, Ravichan­dran Ash­win, Ravi Bish­noi, Kuldeep Ya­dav, Bhu­vnesh­war Ku­mar, Avesh Khan, Har­shal Pa­tel, Ar­shdeep Singh

(CMC)