Under-pressure India face daunting task against Windies

Barring a couple of individual performances, the Indians have generally been a pale shadow of themselves in the first two matches of the four-match series and Mahendra Singh Dhoni's team has a daunting task to put it across the hosts.

With the series locked 1-1, both the teams will go all out for a victory at the Beausejour Stadium and thereby ensure that they cannot lose the series.

The Indians, desperate to make amends for their early exit from the Twenty20 World Cup in England last month, have not really looked convincing in both the matches and their perennial weakness to short-pitched stuff has come back to haunt them.

While the visitors snatched a narrow 20-run victory in the first game at the Sabina Park in Kingston, they suffered an embarrassing eight-wicket drubbing in the second match which will no doubt serve as a morale-booster for the Caribbean team.

The huge defeat will act as a wake-up call for Dhoni's bravehearts who had a string of victories to their credit till only a couple of months back. Suddenly, the team finds itself under tremendous pressure.

In the absence of star performers like Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, the top order batting has lacked the firepower and the poor form of Gautam Gambhir has only compounded India's misery.

Tamil Nadu's wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik has been tried out as Gambhir's opening partner in this series with mixed results. He scored 67 in the first match, but managed just 4 in the second game and it will be interesting to see whether the team management persists with him.

The failure of Rohit Sharma has been a cause of concern for the Indians and the young batsman has himself to blame for the rut as his shot selection has been atrocious.

The Caribbeans have exploited India's weakness to short pitched deliveries to a great extent and the batsmen have now been left with no option but to find a solution.

Dhoni himself has admitted that the batting has not been of a high order and has told his teammates to play more responsibly.

"We should have paid a little more respect to the bowlers (in the last match). The wicket was a bit difficult, it was swinging around a bit. We didn't judge the wicket well and just went around playing our strokes which really brought our downfall," Dhoni said.

"Once you lose too many wickets then the only thing that you are doing is catching up.
RP and me had a partnership otherwise it would have been quite embarrassing," he said.