St Lucia: Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the toss and chose to bowl against the West Indies in the 3rd ODI at Beausejour Stadium, Gros Islet in St Lucia on Friday.

Barring a couple of individual performances, the Indians have generally been a pale shadow of themselves in the first two matches of the four-match series and the visitors have a daunting task to put it across the hosts.

The Indians, desperate to make amends for their early exit from the Twenty20 World Cup in England last month, have not really looked convincing in both the matches and their perennial weakness to short-pitched stuff has come back to haunt them.

While the visitors snatched a narrow 20-run victory in the first game at the Sabina Park in Kingston, they suffered an embarrassing eight-wicket drubbing in the second match which will no doubt serve as a morale-booster for the Caribbean team.

In the absence of star performers like Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, the top order batting has lacked the firepower and the poor form of Gautam Gambhir has only compounded India's misery.

Tamil Nadu's wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik has been tried out as Gambhir's opening partner in this series with mixed results. He scored 67 in the first match, but managed just 4 in the second game.

West Indies: Chris Gayle (c), Runako Morton, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dwayne Bravo, Darren Bravo, Dinesh Ramdin, Jerome Taylor, David Bernard, Sulaimenn Benn, Ravi Rampaul

India: Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (c), Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Abhishek Nayar, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, RP Singh, Aashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma