JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Windies romp into semis

by

20140402

A few years ago a bats­man de­cid­ed to send down some leg breaks one Sun­day morn­ing at Syne Vil­lage, Pe­nal, just to try some­thing, yes­ter­day the same man was the West In­dies leg-spin­ning hero, as the re­gion­al side brushed aside Pak­istan with their biggest ever T20 win, to move in­to the semi­fi­nals of the ICC World T20 tour­na­ment in Dha­ka, Bangladesh.Samuel Badree spun his mag­ic against Pak­istan grab­bing three for ten off four overs as they crashed to 82 all out, chas­ing a vic­to­ry tar­get of 167. Af­ter Badree's work, the West In­dies team and an­oth­er 16,000 Bangladeshis were cel­e­brat­ing, as the team every­one loves –bar­ring James Faulkn­er, marched on to meet Sri Lan­ka in the semis.

With the West In­dies down in the dumps at 81 for five Dwayne Bra­vo and skip­per Dar­ren Sam­my came to the par­ty. They ham­mered 82 runs from the fi­nal five overs, as the white ball which was so dif­fi­cult to hit, soon start­ed tak­ing a beat­ing. The two right han­ders–as they did to Aus­tralia–mer­ci­less­ly beat the Pak­ista­nis as they were left to re­trieve balls with the help of the crowd. Bra­vo spanked 46 off 26 balls and Sam­my fin­ished 42 not out off 20, as West In­dies closed on 166 for six af­ter 20 overs.Fast for­ward half an hour and the game was ef­fec­tive­ly over. West In­dies de­feat­ing Pak­istan with spin in Asia, who would have thought–how­ev­er this "con­fi­dent group" be­lieves they can achieve the im­pos­si­ble and this they did.With Sam­my and Bra­vo shift­ing the mo­men­tum, the 15-minute break be­tween in­nings was too lit­tle for Pak­istan to re­cov­er, as they bat­ted like a team al­ready beat­en.

Kr­ish­mar San­tok­ie sent back Ahmed She­hzad, a cen­tu­ri­on in the last match for a "duck" to start the ac­tion. At this point, the Pe­nal poach­er Badree took over, send­ing back Kam­ran Ak­mal (0), his broth­er Umar Ak­mal (1) and Shoaib Ma­lik (2) as the men in green slumped to 13 for four. An­dre Rus­sell and Sunil Nar­ine then got wick­ets as well as Pak­istan's score read 42 for six and fans start­ed leav­ing to beat the Dha­ka traf­fic.Ear­li­er, Pak­istan con­trolled the game from the toss to over num­ber 15 with their spin­ners hav­ing a stran­gle­hold on the nor­mal­ly free-scor­ing West In­di­ans. Skip­per Mo­ham­mad Hafeez robbed the huge crowd on hand of their evening's en­ter­tain­ment when he sent back the big left han­der Chris Gayle via neat stump­ing from Kam­ran Ak­mal for five.

Fol­low­ing him back to the dug out was Dwayne Smith who snicked one from So­hail Tan­vir to Ak­mal.

With two down in­clud­ing Gayle, West In­dies were look­ing wob­bly and the crowd had grown qui­et. Lendl Sim­mons then got them go­ing again with typ­i­cal free-spir­it­ed Caribbean bat­ting. His form was catch­ing on to the out-of-sorts Mar­lon Samuels who al­so start­ed to thrill with ex­cit­ing stroke­play.How­ev­er, in­de­ci­sion be­tween the sticks would re­sult in Sim­mons be­ing run out for 31 from 29-balls. This pre­cip­i­tat­ed a col­lapse that saw three wick­ets falling for 20 runs. Samuels left for 20 and wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ramdin per­ished for five as the West In­dies crum­bled to 81 for five.

All was not lost as the two he­roes from the last game were at the crease to­geth­er. What they showed dif­fer­ent­ly from the fre­net­ic chase against the Aussies was that they could al­so build an in­nings. They took their time and by over num­ber 17 they went on the war path, much to the de­light of the Bangladeshis who had packed the sta­di­um.

Three overs of may­hem saw the ball climb as high as the Dha­ka sky­scrap­ers as West In­dies re­alised 57 from their fi­nal 18 balls. Bra­vo start­ed to share the licks with suc­ces­sive six­es off Umar Gul in an over that cost 17 runs. With the in­nings run­ning away from him Hafeez called on his gen­er­al Saed Aj­mal and he too was ham­mered. The off-spin­ner was carved for 21 runs from the 19th over. With six balls to go, the Caribbean glad­i­a­tors were run­ning for every­thing. Sam­my fin­ished the job nice­ly with a hur­ri­cane 42 not out off 20 balls with five fours and two six­es.At the end of the West In­di­an flags were in de­mand and those who got waved them in front of the Grand Stand as they wait­ed for the Windies team to show at the back of the pavil­ion.

SCORE­BOARD

West In­dies inns

D Smith c Ak­mal b Tan­vir 8

C Gayle st Ak­mal b Hafeez 5

L Sim­mons run out 31

M Samuels b Shahid Afri­di 20

D Bra­vo run out 46

D Ramdin c U Ak­mal b Babar 5

D Sam­my not out 42

A Rus­sell not out 0

Ex­tras lb4, w5 9

To­tal: 6 wk­ts (20) 166

Fall of wk­ts: 10, 22, 61, 67, 81, 152.

Bowl­ing: M Hafeez 2-0-15-1, S Tan­vir 4-0-27-1, A Babar 4-0-27-1, S Afri­di 4-0-23-1,

U Gul 2-0-29-0, S Aj­mal 4-0-41-0.

Pak­istan Inns

A She­hzad lbw San­tok­ie 0

K Ak­mal c Brabo b Badree 0

M Hafeez c Gayle b Rus­sell 19

U Ak­mal st Ramdin b Badree 1

S Ma­lik st Ramdin b Badree 2

S Maq­sood st Ramdin b Nar­ine 18

S Afri­di st Ramdin b Nar­ine 18

S Tan­vir c Sam­my b Nar­ine 14

U Gul c Sim­mons b San­tok­ie 4

S Aj­mal b Rus­sell 1

A Babar not out 3

Ex­tras w2 2

To­tal: all out (17.5) 82

Fall of wk­ts: 1, 1, 9, 13, 37, 42, 74, 75, 78, 78, 82.

Bowl­ing: K San­tok­ie 2.5-0-9-2, S Badree 4-0-10-3, M Samuels 3-0-21-0, A Rus­sell 3-0-15-2, S Nar­ine 4-0-16-3, D Smith 1-0-11-0.

West In­dies won by 84 runs

Man of the match: Dwayne Bra­vo.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored