By Amlan Chakraborty
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India opened their home season with a flourish, sweeping West Indies 2-0 on Tuesday and tightening the chase for second place in the World Test Championship (WTC) standings after a first series win for test captain Shubman Gill.
Gill impressed in his first series in charge in England where he steered an evolving side to a 2-2 draw despite the test retirements of experienced batters Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
The 754 runs he amassed on that tour suggested the captaincy would not affect the batting of the 26-year-old, who made his fifth test hundred of the year at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.
India won the opener in Ahmedabad inside three days and made West Indies follow on in Delhi before coasting to a seven-wicket victory at head coach Gautam Gambhir’s home ground on the day he turned 44.
FOUR WINS FROM SEVEN FOR CAPTAIN GILL
Gill now has four wins from seven tests as captain.
His men have reduced the gap with Sri Lanka, who are second behind Australia in the WTC standings, ahead of India’s two-test home series against reigning world champions South Africa.
India will particularly be pleased with Kuldeep Yadav, whose eight wickets in Delhi earned the wily left-arm wrist-spinner the player-of-the-match award.
B Sai Sudharsan’s scores of 87 and 39 in Delhi also boosted his bid to hold down the crucial number three spot.
India made the first two WTC finals but lost on both occasions.
“I’m not looking at what’s going to happen in the World Test Championship final (in 2027),” coach Gambhir said.
“I think staying in the present is very important, and it was important for us to win the series at home.
“More importantly, we’ve got a very busy schedule. Hopefully, we can continue from here…2027 that is still a long, long away for us.”
West Indies, crushed 3-0 by Australia in their previous series at home, suffered a second successive clean sweep.
Skipper Roston Chase took some satisfaction from their second-innings batting when hundreds by John Campbell and Shai Hope powered them to 390 in a late display of defiance spread across nearly 119 overs.
“I think this is the kind of fight that I wanted to see from us, from matches before,” Chase said.
“This is a stepping stone, a building step for us to go forward and improve as a test playing nation.”
(Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Ed Osmond)
