St George's–West In­dies will have a chance to get back on a win­ning trail fol­low­ing their dis­mal tour of Aus­tralia where they failed to win any of their five One-day In­ter­na­tion­als.

They open their three-match se­ries against Zim­bab­we at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, Grena­da, to­day.

Hav­ing made trips to USA, Eng­land, Sri Lan­ka, Bangladesh and Aus­tralia with­in the last few months, their re­cent form has been patchy at best, but they did round off the Aus­tralia tour with a big win in the one-off T20. Their bat­ting was the biggest dis­ap­point­ment.

Now against eas­i­er op­po­si­tion, they have cho­sen to rest reg­u­lar cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my and Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bra­vo takes over the cap­tain­cy. Bra­vo not­ed that his first task is to get the team to re­group af­ter a tough tour and get back the win­ning habit. Hav­ing won the World T20, the ex­pec­ta­tions among their home fans would have sky­rock­et­ed.

"Crick­et is played on the day and if we don't do the right things, Zim­bab­we are go­ing to beat us," Bra­vo stat­ed as he warned against com­pla­cen­cy.

West In­dies yes­ter­day called up Jonathan Carter, the left-hand­ed mid­dle-or­der bats­man, as cov­er for all­rounder Kieron Pol­lard. The ex­pe­ri­enced Pol­lard en­coun­tered trav­el dif­fi­cul­ties in reach­ing Grena­da and is doubt­ful for the match, even if he ar­rives to­day.

The 25-year-old Carter, who is al­so a live­ly seam bowler and wick­et-keep­er, is yet to play at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. He has been a mem­ber of the West In­dies A Team for the last two sea­sons.

West In­dies will al­so be hop­ing for some runs from Ramnaresh Sar­wan who was re­called for the Aus­tralia tour af­ter 18 months, but failed to per­form in the three op­por­tu­ni­ties he got. In ab­sence of Gayle and Sam­my, he will hope to make the most of this sec­ond chance.

Sar­wan smashed 90 for the Vice Chan­cel­lor's XI on Wednes­day and there is the feel­ing that his best is yet to come.

Zim­bab­we have played just eight in­ter­na­tion­als in to­tal (three ODIs, four T20s and a Test), los­ing all, in a for­get­table year. Their last one-day­er was 11 months ago, on the tour of New Zealand. They played a tri-se­ries in South Africa in June but their vic­to­ry couldn't be seen by a world­wide au­di­ence as the se­ries was un­of­fi­cial. They haven't played as a unit in an in­ter­na­tion­al since they limped out of the World T20 in Sep­tem­ber af­ter two games. They were due to host Pak­istan and Bangladesh but none of those tours ma­te­ri­alised. The lack of suf­fi­cient match prac­tice, and, im­por­tant­ly, time to­geth­er might be to their dis­ad­van­tage.

TEAMS

West In­dies (prob­a­ble) 1 John­son Charles, 2 Kier­an Pow­ell, 3 Dar­ren Bra­vo, 4 Ramnaresh Sar­wan, 5 Jonathon Carter, 6 Dwayne Bra­vo (capt), 7 An­dre Rus­sell, 8 De­nesh Ramdin (wk), 9 Ke­mar Roach, 10 Tino Best, 11 Sunil Nar­ine

Zim­bab­we (from) Bren­dan Tay­lor (capt), Hamil­ton Masakadza, Vusi Siban­da, Tino Ma­woyo, Kyle Jarvis, Tendai Chatara, Chris Mpo­fu, Pros­per Ut­seya, Reg­is Chak­ab­va, Mal­colm Waller, Kee­gan Meth, Craig Ervine, Chamu Chib­hab­ha, Tino Mu­tombodzi, Nat­sai M'shang­we