India need to win the upcoming World Cup if they are to become the powerhouse of the cricketing world. But if they are to become kings of the one-day game, the team have to maintain a winning momentum.

This was snapped by the West Indies in the third One Day International at Chennai, raising further questions about the experimentation process. The World Cup is hardly two months away  and India's coach Greg Chappell has to stop it right now.

He should pick the final squad for the World Cup before the series against Sri Lanka begins. That will give the players a preparatory frame of mind for the 'big one'.  There's been enough chopping and changing the batting and bowling in the guise of flexibility. If India are to win the World Cup, then all the players have to buck up and organise their mindset positively.

The team must be picked on current form, not on past performance. If India are to perform well in the World Cup, they have to pick up players who are confident, have current form, and are helping the team in more ways then one. It's bad policy to depend on past form, which can be quite misleading. So it's a case of picking batsmen and bowlers who can produce their best in Caribbean conditions.

Everybody anticipated that it would be the West Indies' day in Chennai - and they duly won by three wickets. One cannot understand what prompted Indian captain Rahul Dravid to drop Saurav Ganguly, Zaheer Khan, M.S.Dhoni and Harbhajan Singh. A winning combination should never be changed, and Dravid made a blunder on the day. He should have made the changes in the final ODI at Vadodara, when the team could possibly have been leading 3-0.

Instead, the lack of depth in the batting was exposed at Chennai - otherwise how do you explain India collapsing from 209 for three in the 31st over, to 268 all out?  Without Dhoni and Ganguly, the batting lacked depth and perhaps flexibility. Without Harbhajan and Zaheer, the bowling was thrashed all around by Marlon Samuels and Brian Lara.