Clive Lloyd must be thrilled. Viv Richards is probably beaming. Sir Garfield Sobers was probably drinking a rum punch with the victorious West Indian team after their triumph over England in the final on Sunday in Kolkata.
Champions. The only team to win a World Twenty20 title twice.
Sport is a sterile world that increasingly seems to prefer the dull and the prosaic over the outlandish and extraordinary. In such a world, the West Indies are rank misfits and have no business winning major titles. They came into the 2016 World Twenty20, decried as a team of ragtag mercenaries, men who loved the good life and had no qualms about flaunting it. In 2014, they walked out of a tour in the middle of a series in India. Just a month before the tournament started, they fought with their own cricket board over the amount of money they should be paid.
Against all odds
It was a fight they lost. Their captain Darren Sammy admitted the team were not happy with the remuneration but also emphatically stated that his team would play the tournament regardless, dismissing fears of an unprecedented player strike.
They were also supposed to be a one-man show with all of their hopes resting on the broad shoulders of Chris Gayle. But after a whirlwind century in the very first match against England), Gayle's sequence of scores in the next three matches read 4, 5 and 4.
They were 11/3 in the final against England in Kolkata with only Marlon Samuels to give them hope. Marlon Samuels is a moody, controversial cricketer who would probably not find a place in any other elite team in the world. A man who has been banned from international cricket twice, once for a suspect bowling action and secondly, more gravely, for disclosing information to a bookie. A cricket player, who on field, often gives the impression of being bored and uninterested with what he is doing.
Not in finals though. Not in the final of a World Twenty20. Great performances are about occasion and Samuels loves a big stage. In 2012, he took his team out of the most massive of holes with composed 78 in s mere 56 balls. Four years down the line, he did the impossible: he bettered that knock.
Marlon Samuels’ parting shot
At 35 years old, the Jamaican may well never play another match for West Indies but there could not have been a better swansong. Whenever the match looked like it was going away for the West Indies, Samuels pulled it back. He stayed in, stayed calm and stayed till the end. But if you thought his unbeaten 85 in 66 balls was to be his parting shot, he walked in at the post-match press conference, put his feet up on the table and directed the following towards an old enemy: “Everything I do, [Shane] Warne has a problem. I don’t appreciate what he’s been saying. Maybe because my face is real and his is not.”
Anger and the feeling of victimhood are common themes in West Indian cricket. They are themes that can bring down the strongest of teams. But in the hands of an inspiring leader, they can bring a divided team together and drive them towards a common goal. Throughout the tournament, captain Sammy kept ruminating on the theme that it was his team against the world. Before the game against India, he invoked David and Goliath and reminded those listening to him, about who had won that battle. Before the final, he mentioned how a prominent cricket critic had said that his team had lacked “brains”. As England discovered, a fired-up and motivated West Indies team, out to right the wrongs of this world, are a beast that cannot be contained.
Yet in victory, Sammy was the polar opposite of Samuels. He was grace personified but not without a few messages for his tormentors. He thanked his team and their strength, he thanked the coaching staff but he also slipped in the fact that the team’s uniforms were only made at the last moment and they had still not heard from their cricket board. Right at the end, he had a bitter-sweet parting line “Today, I’m going to celebrate with these 15 men and coaching staff. I don’t know when I’m going to be playing with these guys again because we don’t get selected for one-day cricket. We don’t know when we’re going to be playing T20.”
Memories of 1979
On a warm summer’s day in 1973 at the home of cricket in Lord’s London, Vivian Richards smashed 138 to take West Indies to their second 50-over World Cup title. Sometimes, sport crafts the perfect script by itself. At the other home of cricket, the hallowed Eden Gardens in Kolkata, almost 37 years from that day, Carlos Brathwaite took strike. The last over of West Indies’s chase loomed large before him – they needed 19 runs off the last six balls to win.
Bangladesh failed to score two runs off three balls against India a few weeks ago. But Brathwaite had a better plan – he smashed four consecutive sixes to take West Indies home with two balls to spare. And the cycle was complete. In 1979, West Indies because the first team to win two 50-over World Cups; now in 2016, they had achieved the same distinction in the 20-over format.
But the greatest moment was not those sixes, nor Samuels’ outburst or Sammy’s class in victory. It was a stirring moment after the team had won – the women’s team came out to celebrate along with the men as both the teams soaked in the ecstasy of victory. A few hours earlier, the women’s team had won their own title and now along with the men, they embarked on victory dance to bring down the curtains on a joyous evening.
West Indies have won. The outcasts have triumphed. Suddenly cricket looks much more beautiful again.
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