RANCHI – Vet­er­an all-rounder Ros­ton Chase has lament­ed the fact that West In­dies white-ball cap­tain Shai Hope does not re­ceive the re­spect he de­serves, even as he con­tin­ues to churn out spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mances.

Hope’s bril­liance was on show once again on Fri­day, scor­ing an un­beat­en cen­tu­ry to lead the vis­i­tors to a record-break­ing run chase against In­dia in the sec­ond T20I.

The 32-year-old smashed 102 not out off 45 balls at the top of the or­der to pro­pel the West In­dies to 252 for four in 18.3 overs in re­sponse to In­dia’s to­tal of 249 for five at the JS­CA In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­di­um Com­plex in In­dia.

It was the Windies’ high­est suc­cess­ful chase in T20Is and the sec­ond high­est in T20I his­to­ry.

Hope’s cen­tu­ry was al­so the sec­ond fastest cen­tu­ry for a West In­di­an in T20Is, and his 120-run part­ner­ship with Sher­fane Ruther­ford was the high­est for the West In­dies in T20Is for the fourth wick­et.

Speak­ing in a post-match press con­fer­ence, Chase, who starred with the ball, cap­tur­ing 3-24 from his four overs and was the on­ly bowler from ei­ther side to go at less than 10 runs an over, said Hope con­tin­ued to show his class and qual­i­ty against one of the best teams in the world.

It was Hope’s third cen­tu­ry in five match­es on their white-ball tour of In­dia, with the skip­per hav­ing scored two cen­turies in the pre­ced­ing three-match ODI se­ries which In­dia won 2-1.

Hope av­er­ages 51.48 in 158 ODIs, 32.15 in 72 T20Is and 27.97 in 49 Test match­es for the West In­dies.

“I think peo­ple un­der rate him a lot. Shai Hope is a guy that can blank out a lot of noise and just fo­cus on what he has to do and I think that is his spe­cial skill. When every­thing seems to be go­ing wrong, he is still out there giv­ing his best and per­form­ing for the team, so I think that is his hall­mark skill and he’s a great play­er.

“He doesn’t re­al­ly have the record in red-ball crick­et, but as I said, peo­ple play down his stats and his record that he has, es­pe­cial­ly in T20 crick­et. Every­one knows he’s great in 50-over crick­et and still some­times peo­ple don’t give him the cred­it; they ei­ther say that he bats too slow or he bats for him­self,” Chase, who is al­so the red-ball cap­tain, said.

“So I’m al­ways hap­py when I see him do well, be­cause he’s a guy that I know is very pro­fes­sion­al, puts in the hard work and is the ul­ti­mate pro­fes­sion­al, so when he gets those per­for­mances I’m very hap­py for him.”

CMC