Adjectives such as breathtaking, dazzling, marvellous, spectacular, stunning and superb easily came to mind to describe the batting of Shai Hope in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup on Friday night.
The 30-year-old Barbadian cracked a boundary-studded, unbeaten 82 off 39 balls to lead the Caribbean side to a crucial nine-wicket win against their fellow tournament co-hosts, USA, at the iconic Kensington Oval.
Hope used the green grass of home and opportunity given to him to open the batting for West Indies in this Group 2 match of the Super 8 because of the side strain that ended the tournament for Brandon King, to unleash a volley of strokes that threw a near capacity crowd – which included Prime Minister Mia Mottley and West Indies icons Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Wes Hall and Sir Clive Lloyd – into sheer delirium.
After a disappointing loss in their first Super 8 match against England on Wednesday at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground in Saint Lucia, where South Africa had earlier in the day put a dent in the ol’ enemy’s hopes of cruising into the final four, a win was essential to keep West Indies in the mix.
Roston Chase, another beloved cricketing son of the Barbadian soil, put the home team on the right track with a disruptive spell that undermined the batting of the Americans and sent them crashing for 128 all out in 19.5 overs after they were put in to bat.
Chase ended with three for 19 from his allotted four overs and earned the Player-of-the-Match award, but Hope had to be a strong contender after treating the crowd to a mesmerising display that made the decision of the selectors to omit him from the line-up for all except one of the home team’s previous five matches in the tournament, all the more baffling.
He got into stride when he rocked back and crashed left-arm spinner Nosthush Kenjige over mid-wicket for the first of his eight sixes in the second over and continued to tear into the United States attack with aplomb.
When Hope is batting this way, there are few batsmen in the world that come close to being so attractive, and his strokes, mainly lofted drives that peppered the long-off and long-on boundaries, were a sight to behold.
He shared 67 for the first wicket with Johnson Charles, whose dismissal caught at long-on off left-arm spinner Harmeet Singh for 15 in the seventh over brought left-hander Nicholas Pooran to the crease. The mayhem cranked up further with the Trinidadian left-hander joining the fun with a few meaty strokes of his own.
West Indies reached their target in 10.5 overs and the win was so comprehensive that it gave a significant boost to their net run rate, which has now surpassed the mark of group leaders South Africa and the defending champions England to a healthy +1.814.
This means that once they can knock off the South Africans on Sunday at the Vivian Richards Cricket Ground in Antigua and win in a fashion close to what they did at Kensington, a place in the semi-finals could be theirs no matter what England does against the Americans on Sunday at Kensington.
Earlier, Andre Russell ended with three for 31 from 3.5 overs and fellow pacer Alzarri Joseph finished with two for 31 from his allotted four overs to complement Chase, and the United States crumbled after reaching the comfort of 48 for one at the end of the Power Play.
Chase ruined the homecoming for Aaron Jones – whose entry was greeted by rapturous applause – when the former Barbados Pride batsman essayed a sweep and was bowled for 11 in the 10th over, and sent the Americans scrambling to 69 for four at the halfway stage of their innings.
The off-spinner swung the match decisively when he trapped former New Zealand all-rounder Corey Anderson lbw for seven, playing back and across. Next ball, he got Harmeet Singh caught at backward point for a first-ball duck off a leading edge, and the United States were 88 for six in the 14th over.
Russell and Joseph then carved up the remainder of the American batting, which was led by Andries Gous with 29 and Nitish Kumar, batting at three, with 20.
Both teams made two changes to their line-up with Hope and left-arm pacer Obed McCoy replacing King and Romario Shepherd for West Indies, and Milind Kumar and Shadley van Schalkwyk, replacing Shayan Jahangir and Jasdeep Singh for the United States.
Both teams lost their opening match in the Super 8 – South Africa beat the Americans by 18 runs on Tuesday at the Vivian Richards Cricket Ground on the same day that England beat the Caribbean side by eight wickets at the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground.
This match was the first time that West Indies and the United States met in a T20I International.
Adriel ‘Woody’ Richard
