Twitter Reactions: Another lax performance by the hosts against sharp India

West Indies had clearly come out with a plan for the fourth game in Antigua. For starters, they won the toss, for the fourth straight time, but opted to bat first for the first time in the series. They got off to a sedate start but were in a position to get somewhere around 250 but wickets falling at regular intervals meant that they could only manage to get 189 for 9 in their 50 overs.

India induced three changes in their XI – Shami for Bhuvneshwar, Karthik for Yuvraj and Jadeja for Ashwin. Playing his first ODI in 27 months, Shami bowled tidily with the new ball to return with figures of 0/33 in 10 overs. Jadeja, like Shami, also did not pick any wickets but was disciplined during the middle overs to concede 48 from his 10 overs. Kuldeep Yadav impressed everyone yet again from his crafty bowling returning with 2/31 whereas Pandya (3/40) and Umesh Yadav (3/36) bagged three wickets apiece to dismantle the West Indies batting in the middle overs.

The plan of the hosts was to spend time in the middle and lay a solid foundation. The openers batted without taking any risks to stitch a 50-run partnership but the innings run rate was hovering around 3 runs an over. When Kohli replaced the new ball bowlers with Pandya and Jadeja, Kyle Hope and Evin Lewis wanted to break free which brought the downfall of the former. Hope stepped out to Pandya in an attempt to hit him over mid-off but could only slice it to be taken by the deep cover fielder. Lewis too followed suit four overs later as both openers were dismissed for identical scores of 35.

The other three batsmen – Shai Hope (25), Roston Chase (24) and Jason Mohammad (20) – took their time to get their eye in but got out at the wrong time to push West Indies into the doldrums. All the top 5 batsmen went past the 20 run mark but not a single of them failed to register a half-century. A target of 190 will not be an easy one to defend for the West Indies bowlers against a strong Indian batting line-up.

We bring you the best tweets during the host’s innings as following: