India start as favourites for the T20I series: Carlos Brathwaite

Windies captain Carlos Brathwaite has affirmed that the hosts India start as favourites for the upcoming three-match T20I series, starting on Sunday. Although Windies hold the upper hand in the T20 record between the two sides with five victories from seven encounters, the skipper labels his team as the underdogs.

Brathwaite believes that India at their home are very formidable in any format and with the introduction of the Indian Premier League, they have drastically changed their style of play to an attacking one.

“India at their home in any format is formidable. Especially with the advent of the IPL and the amount of T20 cricket that the Indian superstars play, they definitely start as favourites,” Brathwaite said.

He further added by saying, “We are not accustomed to the underdog tag but we are going to take it this time around. But it’s not something we are ashamed of, really”

The towering all-rounder also emphasized that the absence of Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni won’t make life easy for the Windies and that there are still quality players for India. “Any team has a better chance if they don’t play. They have loads of experience and quality. But Virat and Dhoni missing diminishes the quality.

But that being said, there are still loads of quality in the Indian side. We won’t be disrespecting them or taking them lightly just because they are missing those two. Any team would miss Virat and Dhoni,” he was quoted as saying in News 18. 

Brathwaite refuses to live in the past

Windies are back to the memorable venue where they sealed their second World T20 title in an emphatic fashion. Brathwaite was the man of the moment, smashing four sixes in an over off Ben Stokes as the Windies romped to the championship.

Brathwaite, however, refused to dwell on it saying “I guess it was a personal milestone; it was a good night for myself and the Windies cricket. But that’s history. We now have a young and an exciting squad and it is for us to find the best way to get the best from each and every player.”

“We have a new team – a young and an exciting team. Besides are CPL (Caribbean Premier League) stars are raring to go. Some of them had a taste of it in ODIs and I personally think we did a lot better than what a lot of people expected in the ODI format. We want to create an even bigger surprise in the T20s and come away with the trophy at the end of the series,” Brathwaite said

The T20I series gets underway at Kolkata from 4th November with the next two to be played at Lucknow and Chennai on November 6th and November 11th respectively.

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