SHAR­JAH, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates – Open­er John­son Charles struck a ro­bust half-cen­tu­ry in on­ly his sec­ond One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al in sev­en years as West In­dies clinched a se­ries win with an un­com­pli­cat­ed 78-run vic­to­ry over the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates on Tues­day.

A late in­clu­sion in the squad as a re­place­ment for De­von Thomas, the 34-year-old lashed 63 off just 47 de­liv­er­ies in a Man-of-the-Match ef­fort as West In­dies were dis­missed for 306 in the fi­nal over at Shar­jah Crick­et Sta­di­um.

Cru­cial­ly, he put on 129 for the first wick­et with Bran­don King who top-scored with 64 from 70 balls, while Odean Smith (37), Kea­cy Car­ty (32) and Kavem Hodge (26) all chipped in.

In re­ply, UAE were lim­it­ed to 228 for sev­en off their 50 overs with teenag­er Ali Naseer get­ting his sec­ond straight fifty with 57 from 53 de­liv­er­ies and Basil Hameed, 49 from 84 balls.

Vri­itya Ar­avind got 36 and Aayan Afzal Khan, 25, but the in­nings lacked the im­pe­tus need­ed to se­ri­ous­ly chal­lenge the re­quired run rate of 6.18, as left-arm spin­ner Kavem Hodge (2-46) and off-spin­ner Ros­ton Chase (2-49) struck key blows.

West In­dies now lead the three-match se­ries 2-0, with the fi­nal ODI sched­uled for the same venue on Thurs­day.

Opt­ing to bat first, West In­dies were pow­ered ear­ly on by Charles and John­son who dom­i­nat­ed, the vis­i­tors gath­er­ing 84 from the first 10 overs.

Charles lashed eight fours and three six­es while King notched four fours and four six­es, the pair bring­ing up the cen­tu­ry stand in the 13th over.

How­ev­er, Charles per­ished at the end of the 17th over hol­ing out in the deep and King fol­lowed with at the start of the 22nd over, tak­en on the ropes at long on through smart work by Basil Hameed.

With the part­ner­ship bro­ken, the in­nings de­clined some­what as West In­dies found dif­fi­cul­ty string­ing to­geth­er part­ner­ships.

The next best stand was 43 for the sixth wick­et be­tween Hodge (26) and cap­tain Shai Hope (23), as seam­er Za­hoor Khan claimed three for 44 to halt some of West In­dies’ mo­men­tum.

Smith ar­rived at num­ber nine to lash three fours and a six in a 24-ball cameo as West In­dies gath­ered 60 runs from the last 10 overs.

UAE was set back ear­ly when they once again lost open­ers Muham­mad Waseem (6) and Aryansh Shar­ma (20) cheap­ly, and wick­ets con­tin­ued to tum­ble to leave the hosts tot­ter­ing on 95 for five in the 24th over.

Any hopes West In­dies of a quick end to the con­test were then dashed, how­ev­er, as Naseer and Hameed put on 80 for the sixth wick­et to frus­trate the vis­i­tors.

The 19-year-old Naseer, who made his de­but last Sun­day, struck half-dozen fours and three six­es while Hameed belt­ed a sin­gle four and three six­es.

Chase broke the stand when he got Hameed to hole out to mid-wick­et at the end of the 43rd over, the dis­missal sig­nalling the end of UAE’s re­sis­tance.

(CMC)