THIRU­VANAN­THA­PU­RAM – West In­dies skip­per Shai Hope is ea­ger­ly look­ing for­ward to play­ing against the best side in the world when their One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) se­ries gets un­der­way in In­dia on Sun­day.

The 10th-ranked West In­dies will be mas­sive un­der­dogs when they come up against num­ber one ranked In­dia in their three-match ODI se­ries, hav­ing not won a se­ries on the sub­con­ti­nent in over two decades.

And even though the re­gion­al side will have to go through the Qual­i­fiers to get in­to the 2027 ICC World Cup, Hope said the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play In­dia at home was one he hoped the Windies would grab with both hands.

“Play­ing In­dia in their back­yard is al­ways a chal­lenge, and it’s one that we def­i­nite­ly need to grasp and em­brace.

“When you come here, you ex­pect the best of the best. It’s a great in­di­ca­tor for us to see where we are as a team. Play­ing any­one in their home con­di­tions will al­ways be chal­leng­ing, but it’s some­thing that we al­ways look for­ward to,” Hope said in a pre-match press con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day.

“When you’re play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, you want to play against the best. When they are play­ing in their home con­di­tions, you get the re­al test. So, we’re def­i­nite­ly look­ing for­ward to it and it’s go­ing to be an ex­cit­ing one for us.”

Hope knows much will de­pend on him if the West In­dies are to com­pete against the home side.

He has a stel­lar ODI record in In­dia, hav­ing played 11 ODIs and scored 512 runs at an av­er­age of 56.88.

“I pride my­self a lot on try­ing to be the best that I can be, and one of those things is that you have to be able to adapt. Adapt­abil­i­ty in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions and play­ing against dif­fer­ent op­po­si­tion.

“It’s not al­ways go­ing to work out. We know it’s a pro­fes­sion­al sport. Every day is not go­ing to be your day, but I re­al­ly try to fo­cus on the fine de­tails to give my­self the best chance to score runs. Here in In­dia, you’ve got to play dif­fer­ent­ly than when you go to Aus­tralia or Eng­land or even back in the Caribbean,” Hope ex­plained.

“It’s just about be­ing very crit­i­cal of the way you go about your train­ing and prepa­ra­tion. That’s some­thing I al­ways try to put out there in team rooms when­ev­er we have our chats and dis­cus­sions. Just try to pay close at­ten­tion to de­tail and the way we go about prepar­ing and analysing the op­po­si­tion and the con­di­tions that we play in.”

Apart from be­ing com­pet­i­tive, Hope said he was ex­pect­ing some of the younger, in­ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers like Vi­tel Lawes, Amir Jan­goo and Jew­el An­drew to shine dur­ing the se­ries.

“It’s a very ex­cit­ing time, I would say, for these play­ers. Maybe I’m speak­ing out of turn, but I think I can speak on their be­half. When­ev­er you come to In­dia, it’s one tour you look for­ward to com­ing to play. When I was younger in my ca­reer as well, it was a tour I was ex­pect­ing a lot from my­self. I want­ed to see where I was at.

“Look­ing at the group that we have now, a few of the guys haven’t been in In­dia, haven’t played in these con­di­tions be­fore. I look at it as an ex­cit­ing time. We want to win all the time; we want to make sure we get the best re­sults from a team per­spec­tive, but for me per­son­al­ly as a leader, I want to see pro­gres­sion. I want to see how fast we can adapt against the best in the world and how we can com­pete,” Hope said.

CMC