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It is over. Amen.
With a little luck, West Indies might have featured in this week’s semifinals of the T20 World Cup final. We came really close! Within six dot balls.
What if, with seven runs needed off the last over, Shai Hope had found a Delilah to cut Samson down to size?
Photo: Getty Images.
A Shaheen Afridi to deny Sri Lanka’s dashing Dasun Shanaka victory with two dot balls? A Sam Curran to defend 10 runs for England in the last over against Nepal?
Or a Sunil Narine to bowl a maiden as he did in a super over for Guyana Amazon Warriors against TKR in the 2014 CPL?
In the end, it was not enough. We simply scotched the India snake without killing it. And so in the final, the home side, who took care of England, will face off against New Zealand, who obliterated the high-flying South Africans.
Photo: Getty Images.
And the smart money is on the champions retaining their title.
So for Sammy’s men, the search for title number three will have to wait.
The total WI team performance, however, was much more than the sum of its parts. Truth be told, to be squeezed out of the semifinals by any margin in the last over of the Super Eights was more than we could reasonably have expected at the outset.
Even Bobby conceded that when we talked early on Monday morning.
On Saturday, Sri Lanka having settled Kiwi nerves, Mitchell Santner’s side went on to upset the Proteas in Wednesday’s first semifinal—openers Finn Allen and Tim Seifert taking the much vaunted South African attack to the cleaners.
Photo: Getty Images.
On Sunday, thanks largely to opener Sanju Samson’s swashbuckling, unbeaten 97, Suryakumar Yadav’s side secured their spot in Thursday’s second semi, sneaking home against Daren Sammy’s side. In the 20th over!
Bobby: (making a face) “They had it! They had it in their hands! (He extends his arms, both palms turned up, and makes fists, his frustration audible) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgh! That Sammy man!”
Me: “What’s he done this time? I’m not sure what you holding against him.”
I don’t think Daren Sammy is the world’s greatest coach. Far from it. Nor do I think he has the greatest staff to work with.
Photo: Getty.
But I recognize that the composition of the staff is an economic, not an ideological decision. And I really think the team has done us proud. We could so easily have been in the semis for the first time in ten years.
Pressure, they say, does buss pipe. So what if, off that penultimate Arshdeep Singh over, Jason Holder and Romario Shepherd had got 15—edges and all!—instead of five? What might have been the effect of the additional scoreboard pressure?
What if Holder had held on to the first chance Hardik Pandya offered him at extra-cover off Shepherd? The score would have been 161 for 5, with 35 still needed and just under four overs left.
With almost 70,000 devotees holding their breath and daring the batsmen to deliver, who knows what could have happened?
At the time, India were 1-29 from 2.6 overs.
Photo: Getty Images.
Bobby says WI made the wrong choice at the death. Not the team, not the captain—but the coach!
Bobby: “You wouldn’t have bowled [Gudakesh] Motie or [Matthew] Forde in the last three overs? Even Akeal [Hosein]?”
Me: “Hindsight! For one thing, I think the dew was a problem. Secondly, who says Sammy made the choices? And, finally, who is to say any one of those three bowlers would have fared better? You saw a Samson weakness they could exploit? He was hitting breeze!”
We didn’t know it then but, in Thursday’s semifinal against England, Samson would repeat his heroics, smashing seven sixes and eight fours in his 42-ball 89.
Photo: Getty Images.
The four bowlers who completed their 4-over quota went for 40, 41, 53 and 61 and the pair who bowled the remaining four overs went for 55.
I was arguing on Monday that you shouldn’t make 194 in a T20 World Cup game and lose. By Friday, I had revised that view, thanks largely to Jacob Bethell.
Bethell hit the same seven sixes and eight fours and made 105—off 48 balls! Throughout his innings, I was struck by the absence of premeditation.
The WI batting coach should ensure, I kept thinking, that Shimron Hetmyer and, to a lesser extent, Brandon King have personal copies of that entire innings. And study it regularly.
Photo: Getty Images.
But, I would argue, the batting was not the real culprit on the day—it was the indiscipline of the WI bowlers. When I shared with Bobby some stats I had collected, he called it a “failure of execution”.
I don’t agree. Why? I could discern no real plan hatched to exploit a Samson weakness. He mishits full tosses? My stats don’t show the exact number the WI bowlers served up. But there were almost all almost disdainfully dispatched.
Bowl at fifth or sixth stump or wider? There were six wides (including three in one Romario Shepherd over), 31 boundary balls (25 x 4 and 6 x 6) and only 30 dot balls.
In the WI innings, there were also six wides (including three in one Hardik over), 24 boundary balls (14 x 4, 10 x 6), including one six and one four in the last two overs and 39 dot balls (including the last ball of the innings).
Photo: Getty Images.
Also noteworthy: for WI, only Forde and Shamar Joseph managed to bowl a dot ball with the last delivery in any over. Once each. India did it four times.
They got the sixth ball to or over the boundary rope five times, yielding 33 runs. WI scored 34 off the same number of boundary balls.
So, fine margins. But we knew precisely what we needed to do with the ball. India didn’t.
Bobby: “I find Hope leaves the bowlers alone too much. I’d like to see him deliberately slow the game down sometimes, go and compare notes with his bowlers more often.”
Photo: Getty Images.
Me: “Well, they make plans in the team meetings. Everybody should know what the plan is.”
Bobby: “What about when the plan is not working? You said more than once that Clive Lloyd’s side used to have Plan A, B, C and D!”
Me: “I didn’t say that; Malcolm Marshall said it in Martial Arts, his autobiography.”
Bobby: “We need some ah dat nowadays. Somebody to study opposing players and work out ways to get them out.”
Yadav contributed 18 from 16 balls to the India total of 199/5.
Photo: Getty Images.
Me: “You don’t think the coaches and the analyst do that? I don’t see that they have a choice. Dat is deh wuk!”
Bobby: “Well, somebody sleeping on the job.”
Me: “I disagree. I think they did us proud at this tournament. This is an all-Caribbean backroom staff, eh, coach, batting coach, bowling coach, fielding coach, analyst, etcetera.
“They didn’t do a bad job in this World Cup: moving Hettie up to number three, making Chase the opener in the last game, shuffling the batting order…”
Photo: Getty Images.
Bobby: “I have my doubts about Sammy’s technical competence.”
Me: “So do I. But he doesn’t share much about technique in his public presentations. I think his focus is on minds, on psyching the players up.
“All the talk about dreams and 2016 repeat and David and Goliath is not an accident…”
Bobby: “You called him Jim Jones the other day…”
Me: “Well, I stand by that. The strategy worked. There was no cyanide in the Kool-Aid…”
Photo: Getty Images.
Bobby: (Laughs) “True! For me, the test of success is the number of IPL scouts waiting outside the dressing room to get some newbie or other to sign on the dotted line.”
Me: “Newbie? We had newbies? We only used 12 players in all. But don’t be surprised if today or tomorrow you hear a voice from on high saying, ‘This is my beloved Sam in whom I am well pleased.’”
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