As One Day cricket returns to Kochi, Kerala’s excitement knows no bounds. The opportunity to watch Indian and West Indian heroes up close will be made use of to the maximum by fans in this part of the country.
However, all hopes might go down the drain if the rain god plays spoilsport.
For, the Met office thinks there could be showers over Kochi on October 8, the day of the first ODI encounter of the current India West Indies series. Check live updates and score here.
The first ODI of the five match series has been well looked forward to and the day night game is set to trigger hopes of an interesting series in the coming days.
Star Sports will be live streaming the match at its official website. Watch the match live online here.
If the rain god too wants the game to go on, cricket fans would get to see the men in blue taking on the Windies pace battery with renewed vigor.
The absence of master blaster Chris Gayle in the West Indian line up could be a matter of concern for the visiting team as well as hardcore Indian fans of the batsmen.
The day-night encounter at the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi on Wednesday will be an occasion for both India and West Indies to prove a point. Both the teams wouldn’t want to miss out any chance of a win, as the opener of the series would be looked at with scrutinizing eyes by fans and also the media.
The media and the general public know very well that India are always favorites when it comes to high profile series that happen on home terrain.
India wouldn’t want to break that, while West Indies would love to see that India lose the opening encounter. That in many ways than one would give them the confidence to win the rest of the series too.
Whatever said, all depends on how the Met office predicts. Meanwhile, the Kerala Cricket Association that would be hosting the match says they are well prepared to tackle occurrence of rain.
The ground has facilities to gear up for the match in two hours even if the showers descend. Such is the drainage system that has been deployed at the stadium.
In a day’s time, we would have the right picture of what is bound to happen. The 10th ODI in Kochi since 1998 is important for the hosts too. India have won six of the matches played here, lost two while one was washed out .