Big picture

India are gearing up for a home World Cup, fine-tuning their combination with just over two months to go for the big event. West Indies will play no part in it.

While ODIs will be the most keenly followed format of international cricket over the coming weeks, West Indies may wonder what exactly they're trying to achieve when they play their 50-overs cricket. They'll want to pick themselves up, of course, after the shocks they suffered at the Qualifier in Zimbabwe, but pick themselves up to do what?

With no World Cup to prepare for, there's no wider context to ODI cricket for West Indies for now. There are no World Cup Super League points to win, and there's no threat just yet that they'll fail to make the 2027 World Cup, which will feature 14 teams who will qualify based on their ODI rankings.

West Indies' fans, however, would do well not to mistake the lack of a wider context for a lack of purpose. While it would be easy to look at the team's failure to qualify for the World Cup as a sign of their unstoppable decline as a cricketing force, the reality isn't quite so abject. The top Associate teams have made white-ball cricket more competitive now than it ever has been, and the gap between the world's ninth-best and 13th-best ODI teams has never been narrower. It just so happens that the sport is growing when its World Cup has shrunk.

West Indies will do well, then, to put the Qualifier behind them, put the World Cup out of their minds, and stop worrying about history. Shai Hope and Brandon King shouldn't have to feel worse about missing out on the World Cup than Brandon McMullen or Harry Tector do just because they happen to play for a team that once featured Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards.

The future of West Indies cricket is too tangled up in the sport's economics and geopolitics for one set of players to have any real influence on it. What they can do in this series, however, is stay in the present, pay attention to the next ball, and then the one after it, and let their opponents worry about things like World Cups.

Form guide

West Indies LWLTL (last five completed ODIs, most recent first)
India LLWWW

In the spotlight

Team news

West Indies: 1 Brandon King, 2 Kyle Mayers, 3 Keacy Carty, 4 Shai Hope (capt & wk), 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Rovman Powell, 7 Romario Shepherd, 8 Kevin Sinclair, 9 Alzarri Joseph, 10 Gudakesh Motie/Yannic Cariah/Oshane Thomas, 11 Jayden Seales

India have lately adopted an ODI combination that features three allrounders: Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja and either Axar Patel or Shardul Thakur depending on whether they want to play an extra spinner or seamer. They'll likely have that choice to make in Bridgetown, as well as two others, with Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson competing for the wicketkeeper's spot and a possible three-way battle for the third seamer's role.

India: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Hardik Pandya, 6 Sanju Samson/Ishan Kishan, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Axar Patel/Shardul Thakur, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Umran Malik/Jaydev Unadkat/Mukesh Kumar

Pitch and conditions

That series, however, featured day-night games. All three ODIs in this series will be day games, with Indian TV audiences in mind. The weather could affect the first ODI, with a 20% chance of rain on Thursday. The forecast for the second ODI on Saturday, however, is grimmer, with a 50% chance of rain.

Stats and trivia