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Take a bow, Romario Shepherd. At a time when the Caribbean front-runners aren’t exactly covering themselves in glory, the Guyanese allrounder has given the CWI contingent a boost.
In case you missed it, Rajit Patidar’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings by two runs on Saturday. Without Shepherd’s critical 11th hour intervention, the outcome of the last-ball IPL thriller would have been very different.
His heroics at the death breathed new life into the RCB effort and ultimately moved the Reds to the top of the table.
His match-winning innings came at a juncture when West Indies standard-bearer Nicholas Pooran et al have been steadily losing ground. In that sense, it also stopped the Maroon from slipping down the masthead.
The good news is that Shamar Joseph, still on the Lucknow Super Giants books along with Pooran, is now the only one of the eight West Indians in this year’s IPL still to make a match-day appearance.
Recently removed T20 captain Rovman Powell has at last got a chance to show off his wares. He, however, made little impression in his one innings so far.
(via CWI Media.)
To his credit, he had this insightful comment to make in the run-up to Kolkata Knight Riders match-up with Rajasthan Royals on Sunday:
“When you look at the team and how the team is built, it’s built around strong Indian batters in the middle. So we have those guys to get us through the middle, and then you try to add a little bit of Caribbean power in the last five or four overs.”
Alas, Shepherd apart, Caribbean power has not been on show in recent matches. For many matches now, none of KKR’s Sunil Narine and Andre Russell, RR’s Shimron Hetmyer or Gujarat Titans’ Sherfane Rutherford has been distinguishing himself with bat or ball.
As we wrote weeks ago, Pooran began the season on fire for Lucknow Super Giants. He has gone off the boil.
(via IPL.)
Since his 61 off 34 balls against GT on April 12, he has had scores of 8, 11, 9 and 27. He has now dropped from first to seventh on the list of top scorers.
So thank God for Romario.
Unlike Pooran, he has not drawn any comparisons to the Universe Boss. Had RCB been chasing 213, Saturday’s performance would almost certainly have transported us all back to Carlos Brathwaite at Eden Gardens in 2016. And have easily eclipsed that red-letter day.
(Copyright AP.)
However, RCB were batting first, setting a target. And, any way you look at it, whether you’re chasing or posting a target, 214 is a far, far cry from 159.
Unlike Nicky P in the early season, Shepherd had not smashed his way to 300 runs and thus earned the right to wear the orange cap.
Nor crashed 30-odd sixes to top the Most Sixes table. Nor accumulated enough Fantasy points to lead the prospective MVP pack.
He did not, like Yashasvi Jaiswal in 2023, blast a half-century off a mere 13 balls.
But this knock has to be up there with the best of them.
If getting a half-century off just 14 balls was an improvement on his own 39 off 13 in 2024, it has to be.
If, as we saw on TV, Romario could wow six-hitter Tim David with the persistent power of his hitting, it has to be.
(via Newsday.)
And if he could single-handedly propel his team from 159 after 18 overs to 213 after 20, it bound to must be right up there.
Jacob Bethell (55 off 33 for a 166.7 strike rate) and Virat Kohli (62 off 33 for a 187.9 strike rate) had set the pace for RCB. Man-of-the-Match Shepherd made both look positively pedestrian.
For CSK, 18-year-old Ayush Matre’s got 94 off 48 balls, making his 195.8 strike rate better than Ravindra Jadeja’s 171.1 (77 off 45). Shivam Dube faced only three balls, his 8 giving him a strike rate of 266.7.
(via IPL.)
Romario’s strike rate was more than 100 better at 378.6!
When he came to the wicket in the 18th over, RCB had decelerated after their openers better-than-solid start of 97 off the first ten overs. After Kohli fell at 121 in the 12th over, the spinners put the brakes on. Only 36 more had come when Matheesha Pathirana claimed his second wicket in consecutive overs halfway through the 18th.
The 200-landmark had looked easily accessible at the end of the 12th. Now, at 157 for 5, it was seemingly out of reach. But nobody told the muscular Guyanese allrounder, batting for the first time in the four matches for which he has been selected this season.
(via IPL.)
He faced 14 balls and struck a boundary or a six off no fewer than ten of them.
In the 19th over, he took Khaleel Ahmed for 6-6-4-6-4-6. A no-ball raised the total conceded to 33, making it the most expensive over in this year’s tournament so far.
Then, in the 20th, Romario clouted Pathirana twice to the boundary twice and twice over it, including the final ball of the innings. That proved a hugely important maximum: CSK eventually needed only four runs off the last ball of the match for the win.
(Copyright AP.)
RR are already out of it and LSG and KKR are struggling to keep pace with the leaders. So we West Indians have to give effusive thanks for Romario’s Saturday showing. And ask the cricketing gods to let RCB go all the way—for the first time!—and allow Romario to play a big part in getting them there…
…thus keeping the maroon flying high.
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Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.
