Dinesh Karthik Predicts India’s Playing 11 For 2nd Test Vs Windies
ROHIT Sharma-led Team India earned an innings and 141 runs against Kraigg Brathwaite’s West Indies in the first Test of the two-match series. The visitors will be looking forward to a clean sweep victory over the hosts as they get ready for the second Test match at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port of Spain in Trinidad, on Thursday.
Centuries from Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma, fifties from Virat Kohli, and terrific performances from the Indian bowlers especially Ravichandran Ashwin helped India with the dominant victory. Now the question is whether the Indian team will make some changes in the playing 11 or not.
Dinesh Karthik Predicts Team India’s Playing 11
The Indian wicket-keeper batsman believes that the Indian side would enter the same 11 men after their performance in the first Test and as they got a good rest too.
“India won’t make any changes be it their mindset, skillset or playing XI. They will bring the same brand of cricket to the table. They have been very strong, very sure about what they want. The Ashwin-Jadeja combo has done wonders. Debutant Yashasvi Jaiswal has done well. There is no room for a change unless there is a change. They have had a five-day break. In the Caribbean, you generally go to the beaches and that’s what they must’ve done for the first two-three days and then they would’ve practiced for two days,” Karthik said on Cricbuzz.
Karthik then went on and talked about how West Indies got a mental block against Team India while playing Test cricket that is holding them back to play at their full potential.
“This becomes an even more important one for West Indies because they haven’t won a Test against since 2002. That’s almost two decades. They would want to turn that around but they have a mental block against India. They need to find a way to sort that out. Do they need to make some changes? There’s fast bowler, Shanon Gabriel, do they bring him in place of one of the seamers or do they strengthen their batting by dropping an extra seamer? Kirk McKenzie is an option,” said Karthik.
“What West Indies needs to bring is a lot of fire. They are capable of that. Under Kraigg Brathwaite, they have done a few special things, they need to draw confidence from them. They need to draw belief from that. Somewhere they have lost it in their mind before the Test started and this is not how international cricket should be played. I think they know that they are a much better team than the performance they have put in in the last Test,” he added.
