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India will be touring the Caribbean for a four-Test series versus the West Indies in about three months time. That was confirmed on Tuesday by the President of the West Indies Cricket Board, Dave Cameron. Again.
In fact, this was about the third or fourth time in the last 12 months that either Mr Cameron or the WICB's CEO, Michael Muirhead have confirmed the upcoming series — presumably, just to reassure us. This is helpful, because the perceived strength and depth of understanding between the BCCI and the WICB has been in a little bit of doubt since Windies' ill-fated ODI tour of October 2014.
Outwardly, the cordial Caribbean hosts have been confidently repeating that India will join them at West Indies' table for a feast of cricket in July/August.
Inwardly, they are still nervous that their visitors will either bring with them an invoice for an unpaid bill of $41.7m for their last get-together — or just not turn up at all.
So it's good to know they are definitely coming. India can surely expect Chris Gayle to be taking guard to open the batting on the first morning of the first Test; and Dwayne Bravo to be marking out his run-up.
But these are troubles beyond the horizon. On the immediate vista is the exciting prospect of an epic semi-final between hosts India and West Indies in the ICC World T20. Despite both sides suffering unexpected defeats in the group stage, many will expect the eventual competition winner to emerge from this clash of T20 titans. These were the two pre-tournament favourites; and both would realistically be expected to triumph over England in the final.
Lest you forget, India versus West Indies is a fixture that has huge historical significance - which is not restricted to the troubled events of the aborted tour of eighteen months ago.
It is burnt into most Indian fans' mind that the mighty West Indies were the vanquished at Lord's in 1983, when humble India produced one of the unlikeliest results in two hundred and fifty years of cricket, to prevent Clive Lloyd being handed the World Cup for a third successive time. One wonders if Lloyd had got his huge mits upon it, would the West Indies have kept that trophy forever - rather like Carlos Alberto's Brazil kept the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1970?
It was not to be - and the images we preserve of that day are of the beaming Mohinder Amarnath and Kapil Dev. Books have been written, and will continue to be written, about how this was THE pivotal moment in Indian cricket history. What is often forgotten is that these very two same opponents were the starting point for another cricket revolution a little over seven years earlier.