Another sad day for West Indies cricket, as they were on the wrong end of yet another clean sweep at the hands of India at the Providence Stadium in Guyana on Tuesday.
At the end of the game Indian captain, Virat Kohli was hoisting the MyTeam 11 trophy with his West Indies counterpart Carlos Brathwaite gazing at him probably wondering what it would have felt like in his grasp.
His team did not deserve to lift the trophy as they were soundly outplayed in the series. They were defeated by four wickets in the first match at Central Broward Regional Park in Fort Lauderdale, USA, followed by a 22-run defeat under the DLS System the next day at the same venue.
The Windies arrived in familiar territory in Guyana and with the advantage of the crowd backing them for the first time in the series, they tallied a competitive 146 for six off 20 overs, thanks to Keiron Pollard's first half-century in T20 Internationals in seven years.
The Indians then got a century partnership between Kohli and Rishabh Pant that knocked the stuffing out of the West Indies fight and India cruised home by seven wickets with five balls to spare.
Earlier, it was the work of Deepak Chahar that set the tone for the day, as the swing bowler was too much for three left-handers at the top of the West Indies batting order. Immaculate lines could best describe the work of Chahar. He kept dragging the left-handers across the crease and as soon as they were out of position he brought those swinging balls back into then that caused their demolition. Any team batting 14 for three earlier in the piece, would have struggled to mount anything meaningful and luckily the West Indies had Pollard, who scored 58 off 45 balls with six fours and one six. Nicolas Pooran scored 17 as the two added 66 runs for the fourth wicket. Rovman Powell continued his good form and scored an unbeaten 32 off 20 balls with two fours and a six. Chahar grabbed three for four off three overs. What was amazing was that his first cousin Rahul Chahar who together with him dreamt of playing at the same time for India made his debut in the match. The leg-spinner took 1/27 as the attention was focussed on his cousin Deepak.
When India batted there was never any pressure on them and they easily took counted the runs. Kohli made 59 runs off 49 runs with six fours, while the dashing keeper/batsman Pant made 65 not out off 42 balls with four sixes and four fours.
The ODI series gets going tomorrow with the first game also at Providence. The bandwagon will then shift to the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain where two matches will be played to round off the instant section of the series.
SCORES
WEST INDIES 146 for six off 20 overs (Kieron Pollard 58, Rovman Powell 32 not out; Deepak Chahar 3-4, Navdeep Saini 2-34)
INDIA 150 for three off 19.1 overs (Rishabh Pant 65 not out, Virat Kohli 59, KL Rahul 20; Oshane Thomas 2-29)