Indore, Dec 7: India will have to sort out their top-order batting woes as buoyed by a morale-lifting 16-run victory in the previous game, a resurgent West Indies would be a tough nut to crack in the fourth and penultimate one-dayer at the Holkar Stadium here tomorrow.
Windies had competed well against the stronger and more fancied hosts in the first two matches that they lost at Cuttack and Vishakapatnam, but the victory in the must-win Ahmedabad match has lifted their sagging spirits on the tour where very little has gone right for them.
The much-vaunted Indian batting line-up would certainly be wary of the dangers posed by the varied Windies attack after the way they folded up in the Motera Stadium.
Rohit Sharma played a lone dominant hand among the front-line batsmen and has been the bulwark of this batting order that is without the presence of key players Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni - both resteed - and the indisposed Yuvraj Singh.
The biggest flops have been the Delhi duo of Virender Sehwag, who is leading the squad in the absence of Dhoni, and Gautam Gambhir, performing well below par in the three games.
Both were dismissed shockingly for first-ball ducks by West Indies' pacer Ravi Rampaul who has made a big impact with both the bat and the ball in the rubber.
Sehwag and Gambhir need to pull up their act and come out with bigger contributions for India to take an unassailable lead and clinch their second ODI series in a row after the 5-0 whitewash of England.
“We have to look at our top order. We have to click and fire. We have to give a good start as a team so that we can achieve any target or set any target for the West Indies in the coming games,” said Sehwag after India lost at Ahmedabad.
