West Indies captain Brian Lara won the toss and elected to field in the first one-dayer against hosts India in Nagpur on Sunday.

The visitors, who have won six of their past seven meetings against India since May, dropped batsmen Lendl Simmons and Devon Smith and pacer Rayad Emrit for the opening game of the four-match series.

India is under tremendous pressure following a series of poor displays and will look to turn around their fortunes ahead of the World Cup in March.

Former captain Sourav Ganguly, returning to one-day arena after 16 months, is set to open the innings with another left-hander Gautam Gambhir while the experienced Sachin Tendulkar has been dropped down the order to bolster the fragile middle-order.

The other three matches will be played in Cuttack (Jan. 24), Chennai (Jan. 27) and Baroda (Jan. 31).

Teams:

India: Gautam Gambhir, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid (capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Dinesh Karthik, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Dhoni (wk), Harbhajan Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Shanthakumaran Sreesanth.

West Indies: Chris Gayle, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Marlon Samuels, Brian Lara (capt), Runako Morton, Dwayne Bravo, Denesh Ramdin (wk), Dwayne Smith, Ian Bradshaw, Jerome Taylor and Daren Powell.