Brief scores:

Windies 104 (31.5)
Jason Holder 25 (33)
Marlon Samuels 24 (38)
Ravindra Jadeja 4/34

India 105/1 (14.5)
Rohit Sharma 63* (56)
Virat Kohli 33* (29)
Oshane Thomas 1/33

The final one-dayer at Thiruvananthapuram was a cake-walk for team India where they defeated the Windies convincingly by 9 wickets to win the 5-match ODI series 3-1.

Opting to bat first, Windies were playing two batsmen short – an injured Ashley Nurse was replaced by Devendra Bishoo and Chandrapaul Hemraj lost his place to pacer Oshane Thomas.

Windies had a bizarre start to their innings when Bhuvneshwar Kumar, in the first over, dismissed Kieran Powell for a duck. Jasprit Bumrah too struck in his first over when an in-decker knocked the top of Shai Hope’s middle.

Rovman Powell, who was promoted as an opener, tried to resurrect the innings along with Marlon Samuels. The duo stuck around for a while before a soft dismissal caused Samuels’ downfall as soon as Kohli took pace off the ball and gave it to Jadeja.

Windies wanted Shimron Hetmyer to flourish but a quicker one from Jadeja had him trapped plumb in front. Windies, at this point, were reeling at 53/3 in the 16th over.

Rovman Powell and Fabian Allen were bounced out by Khaleel Ahmed and Jasprit Bumrah which added to the visitors’ misery leaving it to Jason Holder and Keemo Paul to rescue this.

Holder threw it away when he was batting on 25 and chipped the ball to a diving Jadhav to end any hope of a comeback. Kuldeep Yadav, in the 29th over, enticed Keemo Paul to a play a big shot which he ended hitting to Rayudu in the outfield.

Jadeja struck twice in the 32nd over to first remove Roach and then dismiss Oshane Thomas helping India bundle out the Windies for 104.

Chasing 105 for a series victory, India lost Shikhar Dhawan early to Oshane Thomas with the ball doing a little off the deck. Windies were unlucky when Jason Holder dropped an easy catch to give Virat Kohli a life off Oshane.

Oshane also almost had Rohit Sharma when the latter nicked one behind only to know that the young pacer had overstepped.

Apart from this, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli both faced awkward bounce but had a certain plan to deal with it. Rohit, after getting used to the conditions, took off in no time.

Holder and Oshane dropped short and paid the price immediately. Rohit had no problem in hitting them to the boundary ropes consistently.

He raced away to his 37th ODI half-century, taking India closer to a series victory. Virat Kohli all this while took a back-seat after smashing boundaries initially and was happy to give back the strike to Rohit who was hitting in full flow.

Rohit also hit his 200th ODI six, becoming only the second Indian after MS Dhoni to achieve this feat. He was also the quickest to do it, in 187 innings, beating Shahid Afridi who did it in 195 innings.

It became just a matter of time before India chased the target in 14.5 overs to pocket the series 3-1. Virat Kohli was named as the Man of the Series for amassing 453 runs across five games.

The ODI series will be followed by a three-match T20I series which starts on November 4 where Rohit Sharma will lead the Indian team in the absence of Virat Kohli.