MUMBAI, India – Wicketkeeper/batsman Denesh Ramdin said the upcoming One-day International series between West Indies and India will be quite interesting.
The two sides open the series on Thursday at the Nehru Stadium in the south-western coastal city of Kochi, following a two-Test series in which the Windies were swept aside 2-0 by the home team.
"India have been playing very good One-day cricket lately, but we can take something out of the books of the Australians against whom they played recently," Ramdin told WICB Media.
"The Aussies rotated the strike well. They put away the bad balls. They went hard at the Indians and put up totals of over 300. If we can achieve this, we should be able to get our bowlers to defend it, or restrict them and chase down the runs, but it will be challenging to beat them on their home turf."
Ramdin ended the Test series with a fluent, unbeaten 53 in the visitors’ second innings of the second Test which ended on Saturday at the Wankhede Stadium here.
He said the knock reassured him about his form going into the ODI series.
"It was a decent knock," he said. "I tried to spend time in the middle and build partnerships with whoever I met there. Shivnarine Chanderpaul and I tried to take it as deep as we could, but unfortunately we could not.
"I am very disappointed in the manner we lost – inside three days. Obviously, we did not plan on things turning out that way because we did not bat as well as we wanted to – but all in all it was a decent knock."
Ramdin hailed Shane Shillingford for the way he bowled in the series and hoped soon the lanky Dominican could link up with fellow off-spinner Sunil Narine to terrorise the World’s batsmen.
Shillingford grabbed 11 wickets from 98 overs at 31.45 runs apiece including two hauls of five wickets or more.
He took 6-167 from 55 overs in the first Test at Eden Gardens in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata and 5-179 from 43 overs in the second Test.
Shillingford has now taken 59 scalps at 31.27 apiece in 12 Tests and is now ranked at 16th in the Test bowling rankings maintained by the ICC, cricket’s World governing body.
"I thought Shane bowled well, but he was not backed up by the other bowlers to keep the pressure going and I guess we will have to learn from this experience to go from strength to strength," he said.
"Shane and Sunil are two different off-spinners, but they do get the ball to go both ways. The day they play together, they will cause devastation for batsmen out there."
Ramdin said: "Shane is also a bit different to Sunil because he gets the ball to bounce a bit more and there is not much of a change in his action when he is bowling the ‘doosra’, so you have to watch the ball very closely.
"The bounce Shane gets makes it difficult for batsmen and very often they get caught at bat-pad, so it’s for him to work on his game more, and not relax, and perhaps, Sunil can play a similar role for us in the 50 overs-a-side games coming up."
Narine is now the No.1 ranked bowler in ODIs. He has captured 60 wickets at 24.40 each in 39 matches since his debut for West Indies two Decembers ago in the Indian city of Ahmedabad.