India vs West Indies 1st T20I Highlights: WI restrict IND to 145/9, win by four runs

We are gonna bat. Looks like a dry surface. India are playing a lot of spinners, let's see how we cope against them. The guys are confident. It's not a complete change in strategy. We are still boundary hitters, we are trying to run hard. We have gone with our strengths.

Hardik Pandya calls heads, it falls tails and so Rovman Powell wins the toss. West Indies will bat first. Pandya as bad as ever in remembering the team sheet and so we will understand who missed out from India when we get the team sheet. 

Tilak Varma and Mukesh Kumar are set to make their T20I debuts for India. It is an international debut for Tilak while Mukesh has now made his debut in all three formats for India. 

They have no ODI World Cup to aim at, that dream ended in Zimbabwe a few weeks back. What they do have, though, is a head start on all other teams for next year's T20 World Cup and since that is also the format where they have thrived the most, they would be focussing on that one.

Not withstanding West Indies' collapse, the last ODI of the series was played here and India had made merry with the bat. We could see similar high scoring conditions today. 

West Indies and India have faced each other in eight T20 bilateral series, two of which were one-off matches. India have won five of them and the West Indies have not won a series against them since 2019.

Powell is vice captain of the West Indies ODI team but he was dropped for Keacy Carty after the first match of the series. He now returns as captain of the team and may have a point or two to prove. 

The 29-year-old from Gopalganj, Bihar has grinded it out in domestic for years and years but an international call up was nowhere to be heard. Now, he is set to make his Test, ODI and T20I debuts in one tour of the islands that is the abode of arguably the greatest legacy in world cricket. With the number of senior fast bowlers absent in this series, Mukesh could end up being one of the leading figures of this attack.

Ishan Kishan is one player who has consistently played in one position throughout this tour and boy, hasn't he been impressive. He was left with nothing to do in the first Test but in the second, he smacked an unbeaten 52 off 34 balls. That was followed by scores of 52, 55 and 77 in the ODI series.

Pooran comes into this first T20I after playing a monster innings in the Major League Cricket (MLC), the brand new T20 league from the U S of A. Playing for MI New York against Seattle Orcas in the final, Pooran helped his side chase down a target of 184 in just 16 overs and win the inaugural title. How did he do that? Well he smacked 137 runs off 55 balls against attack starring Cameron Green, Dwaine Pretorius, Wayne Parnell, Imad Wasim and Andrew Tye. His included 10 fours and 13 sixes. Wowza!

The players who were in the ODI and Test teams for the West Indies may have been new faces for a number of Indian fans but that won't be the case in the T20Is. Nicholas Pooran, Jason Holder, Odean Smith and Akesl Hossein all return for this series.

Suryakumar Yadav has done a real Jekyll and Hyde in limited overs cricket. While nothing much was ever expected from him as a Test player, everyone was excited to see how SKY would transfer his T20 form to the one day game just over a year ago, something that players do in a fairly routine fashion. But his ODI and T20I numbers couldn't be more different. In 48 T20Is, SKY has scored 1675 at a stunning strike rate of 175.76 and average of 46.52. In ODIs, he does have a strike rate of 101.38, but then has scored just 511 runs in 26 matches at an average of 24.33. He will be keen to get back in the groove now that India are playing in a format he thrives in.

The ODI World Cup, the original “World Cup” in cricket before the T20s came strutting along, will be played later this year in India and so the logic behind playing a five-match T20I series might be a bit difficult to be seen. But despite it being a different format, this series does give a lot of the younger Indian players a chance to audition for the big event. 

Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ishan Kishan(w), Shubman Gill, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Hardik Pandya(c), Axar Patel, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik, Mukesh Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav, Avesh Khan, Ravi Bishnoi, Tilak Varma

Kyle Mayers, Johnson Charles, Nicholas Pooran(w), Shai Hope, Shimron Hetmyer, Rovman Powell(c), Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, Alzarri Joseph, Obed McCoy, Oshane Thomas, Brandon King, Odean Smith, Roston Chase, Romario Shepherd

Hardik Pandya is back as captain, as opposed to being acting captain on the field while the real captain practically sat out an entire series. The ODI series was one in which India's reserves were tried out and they came out flying colours in the third match, although they would still be worried about the amount of wagging that West Indies' tail did against them. This is the format in which the West Indies had become two-time champions not too long ago but there is no doubt that India remain firm favourites to win this series as well.