Overview of Indian Cricket Team’s Tour to West Indies

Indian Men’s Cricket team toured the West Indies and the United States (US) from August 3-September 3, 2019. It played 2 Tests, 3 One Day Internationals (ODIs) and 3 Twenty20 International (T20I) matches. The tour started with 2 of the T20I matches played at the Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, Florida. The Test series formed a part of the inaugural 2019–21 International Cricket Council (ICC) World Test Championship.

Captains:

• The captain of the Indian cricket team was Virat Kohli for all the matches.
• The captain of the West Indies cricket team for Tests & ODIs was Jason Holder and for T20s was Carlos Brathwaite.

T20I Series
i. India won the 3 match series 3-0 against West Indies.
ii. The 3 matches were held in the following venues:

• Central Broward Regional Park Stadium Turf Ground, Lauderhill, Florida, US (2 matches)
• Providence Stadium, Guyana, South America.

iii. Following are the highlights of the series:

Records created

• Rohit Sharma of India became the most prolific six-hitter in T20 Internationals surpassing the record of Chris Gayle (West Indies) of 105 sixes. The total number of sixes hit by Sharma stands at 107.
• Indian team captain Virat Kohli attained the pole position among Indians in the shortest format across all competitions. He bettered Suresh Raina’s record to become the highest scorer among Indians in T20 cricket. Raina held the top spot with 8392 runs and now Kohli entered the game with 8416 runs.
• Pacer Navdeep Saini became the first Indian bowler to bowl the 20th over as a maiden in a T20I, achieving the feat on his international debut against West Indies. Former New Zealand spinner Jeetan Patel (2008), Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Amir (2010) and Singapore’s Janak Prakash (2019) are the other three bowlers to have achieved the feat.
• India batsman Rishabh Pant broke the Indian record for the highest score by an Indian wicketkeeper in T20Is when he hit a match-winning 65 for the team in the 3rd T20I against West Indies in Guyana. He surpassed the record held by MS Dhoni of India who held a record of scoring 56 runs against England (2017).

ODI Series
i. India won the 3 match series 2-0 against West Indies. The first match finished as a no result.
ii. The 3 matches were held in the following venues:

• Providence Stadium, Guyana, US
• Queen’s Park Oval, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago (2 matches)

iii. Following are the highlights of the series:

Records created
Virat Kohli

• Indian captain Virat Kohli broke Pakistan’s Javed Miandad’s (1930 runs in 64 matches) 26-year-old record to become the highest run-scorer, against West Indies in ODI cricket. He surpassed Javed Miandad’s tally of 1930 runs in 34 matches.
• He eclipsed former captain Sourav Ganguly (11,363 runs in 311 ODIs) to become the second highest run-scorer for India in ODIs. He scored 11,406 runs in 238 innings. He is only behind Sachin Tendulkar (18,426 runs).
• He smashed his 42nd ODI century off 112 deliveries and has taken 12 innings to reach the 42nd from his 41. Sachin Tendulkar had taken 37 innings to go from 41 to 42.
• He became the first batsman to score 20,000 international runs in a decade with 20,502 runs across all formats.

Chris Gayle of West Indies
He broke Brian Lara’s ( West Indies) ODI run-scoring and West Indies appearance records of most ODI runs by a West Indies batsman. It was his 300th match in the 50-over format by bettering Lara’s tally of 10,348 runs.

Test Series
i. India won the 2 match series 2-0 against West Indies. It was India’s eighth straight Test series win over West Indies.
ii. The 2 matches were held in the following venues:

• Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, North Sound, Antigua, West Indies.
• Sabina Park, Kingston, Jamaica

iii. Following are the highlights of the series:

• Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah became the fastest Indian bowler to take 50 Test wickets.
• Virat Kohli became the most successful Indian Captain in Overseas Tests. He has won 28 test matches as a captain. In the first Test, with India’s victory Virat Kohli equalled MS Dhoni’s record of 27 Test wins.
• Jasprit Bumrah of India became the first Asian to take 5-wicket hauls in Tests in Australia, England, South Africa and the West Indies. It was his fourth five-wicket haul in Tests.
• Indian vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane smashed his 10th hundred in Test cricket. It was his first hundred in international cricket since his 132(222) against Sri Lanka in August 2017. He is the 16th Indian batsman to hit at least 10 hundreds in Test cricket.
• India defeated West Indies by a massive 318-run margin in the first cricket Test match. With this win, topped of the World Test Championship table with 60 points. Sri Lanka stood at the second place with same points (60), Australia and England held third and fourth respectively with 32 points each.
• Ishant Sharma of India surpassed the record held by Kapil Dev as the most successful Indian pacer outside Asia. Sharma has 156 wickets in his name whereas Dev held the record with 155 wickets outside Asia. Spinner Anil Kumble has the most wickets outside Asia with 200 wickets.
• Indian Wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant became the fastest Indian to claim 50 wicket-keeping dismissals in Test cricket, surpassing the record held by MS Dhoni. He achieved this feat in the 11th test whereas Dhoni achieved it in 15 Tests.
• Mohammed Shami became the 3rd fastest Indian pacer to take 150 Test wickets in his 42nd Test match, surpassing the record held by Zaheer Khan of India. Kapil Dev is the fastest among Indian pacemen to complete 150 Test wickets in 39 matches followed by Javagal Srinath (40).

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