As fans wait in anticipation for the first fixture of the three-match ODI series between the hosts West Indies and India to kickstart at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados, both units have different reasons to play the series to their full potential.
While team India would look to polish itself in the best way possible as there are very few games remaining before the ODI World Cup gets underway from October 5 onwards in India, for the Windies it's all about winning the series and proving it to everyone that they aren't as bad as the results of the ODI World Cup Qualifiers in Zimbabwe portrayed.
Being a team sport, the focus as always will be on securing the series in as commanding a way as possible. However, there is a cluster of individual milestones to be achieved and they are big enough for the fans to tune into the contests in addition to rooting for their favourite sides.
The Windies skipper Shai Hope is on the verge of becoming the 11th West Indian to scale the mark of scoring 5000 runs in One-Day internationals, while both Rovman Powell (975) and Brandon King (969) are inches away from scaling the 1000-run mark in ODIs.
The three-match ODI series can also become really special for India's premier allrounder Ravindra Jadeja as he is nine wickets away from claiming 200 wickets in the 50-overs format. Significantly, a record that might set people buzzing more than any other involves the batting duo of India's former skipper Virat Kohli and the incumbent leader Rohit Sharma.
The batting pair of Virat and Rohit has aggregated 4998 runs while batting together in the ODI circuit with a highest stand of 246 runs in 85 innings. All of these runs have come at an impressive average of 62.47, including 18 century stands and 15 half-century partnerships.
Both batters also have impressive individual records against the Men in Maroon in the ODI circuit and seem to have developed a liking towards the team from the Caribbean. Virat leads the chart for the Indian batters to have scored the most number of runs against the West Indies, having accumulated 2261 runs in 42 matches. Rohit too isn't that far behind the former India captain as he has scored 1601 runs in 36 fixtures.
| Batting pair | Innings | Runs | Average |
| Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly | 176 | 8227 | 47.55 |
| Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara | 151 | 5992 | 41.61 |
| TM Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara | 108 | 5475 | 53.67 |
| Marvan Atapattu and Sanath Jayasuriya | 144 | 5462 | 39.29 |
| Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden | 117 | 5409 | 47.44 |
| Gordon Greendige and Desmond Haynes | 103 | 5206 | 52.58 |
| Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma | 117 | 5193 | 45.15 |
| Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma | 85 | 4998 | 62.47 |
