Hope dismantles USA in comfortable win for West Indies

Barbados: West Indies faced USA in their second match of the Super 8 at the Kensington Oval in Barbados. The hosts won the toss and decided to bowl first. Both teams came into this match after losing their opening games of the Super 8 stage, so a win here was very important for both the sides.

The Americans suffered from a disappointing start as their opener, Steven Taylor lost his wicket to Andre Russell in the second over. A 48-run partnership between Andries Gous and Nitish Kumar steadied USA’s ship, however, Gudakesh Motie got the wicket of Nitish in the seventh over leaving USA at 51/2.

Soon after, Roston Chase took the important wicket of captain Aaron Jones for 11 runs to put USA in a not-so-comfortable situation. From that point on, the wickets never stopped tumbling for the Americans. The brilliant West Indian bowlers not only restricted the flow of runs but kept on taking wickets. Chase was the best bowler for the Windies with his great figures of 3/19 in 4 overs. Alzarri Joseph also chipped in with 2 wickets while Russell bowled his best spell of the tournament with figures of 3/31 as USA got bundled out for only 128 runs in 19.5 overs.

In reply, Shai Hope and Johnson Charles opened the West Indian innings. Hope was elevated up in the order because of regular opener, Brandon King suffering an injury in their previous match against England. The openers gave a great start to West Indies especially Hope who blasted the American bowlers around the park during the powerplay. The opening partnership was broken in the seventh over as Charles was dismissed by Harmeet Singh for 15. Next up came Nicholas Pooran who alongside Hope made the match a one-sided affair.

In the ninth over, Hope smashed Mukesh Kumar for 3 sixes in a row in an over where USA gave away 22 runs. Then in the eleventh over with West Indies requiring only 19 runs to win, Pooran smashed 2 consecutive sixes to Saurabh Netravalkar before Hope ended the match with another six on the fifth ball of the over as West Indies comfortably reached the target of 129 runs in 10.5 overs and won the match by 9 wickets. Hope was indeed the star performer with the bat, scoring 82 runs in just 39 balls while Pooran also played a good cameo of 27 in 12 balls.

This win improved West Indies’ net run-rate by quite a big margin and now their semi-final hopes rest on their match against South Africa at Antigua on Monday. On the other hand, it was agony for USA as this heavy defeat left them at the cusp of elimination. But regardless, the fact that they made it this far in their first international cricket tournament needs to be appreciated more.

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