We are at Eden Gardens, the theatre of dreams, of hopes and aspirations, of ambition and desire. Except that, on this night, it is all this for India. For West Indies, it was the stuff of nightmare. In a must-win, virtual quarterfinal of the T20 World Cup this March, with the winner guaranteed a shot at England in the last four and the loser destined to take an early flight back wherever, Suryakumar Yadav’s men came through by five wickets in the final over, thanks to a stunning unbeaten 97 by Sanju Samson.
West Indies had posted a competitive 195 for four from their allotment on being put in, riding on a 25-ball 40 by opener Roston Chase, a blazing cameo (27 off 12) by Shimron Hetmyer, and unbeaten 30s by Rovman Powell and Jason Holder, who added 76 in just 35 deliveries. The finish was breathtaking as the power-packed Powell and loose-limbed Holder reeled off five sixes between them. The momentum was with the Caribbeans at the interval – runs on the board in a knockout fixture – but India at home? With 70,000 egging them on? It was an unstoppable force once Samson found his bearings and the rest batted around him.
At the end of the night, as the home fans and the Indians celebrated the fact that the hosts’ title defence was well on track, the West Indian captain fronted up at the mandatory media conference. He had had a laboured stay in the middle – 32 off 33 deliveries, three fours and a six – which meant that in the PowerPlay, despite not losing a wicket, the West Indies mustered only 45 runs.
On the back-foot
The disappointment on the skipper’s face was obvious. A semifinal slot had just slipped away, a shot at an unprecedented third title gone just like that. As he was licking his wounds, Shai Hope looked around at the packed press conference room where a constant buzz, the result of some 100 people packed into a small hall, was omnipresent.
If Hope was looking for familiar faces, he was in for a disappointment. A vast majority of the gathering was from the Indian contingent; there were a few from elsewhere but hardly a journalist from any of the Caribbean islands. One is not sure what Hope made of that, but as the press conference unfolded, he was in for a rude shock.
One question after another flew at the right-handed opener about his ‘approach’. About his strike-rate. About his inability to force the pace. About the fact that he had scored at less than a run a ball, that he hadn’t made the most of the field restrictions. It wasn’t one query. Or two. Or three. There was a sustained and barely concealed accusation – not intentional, certainly – that go-slow Hope had cost his team dearly.
Hope’s countenance went from mildly amused to somewhat unhappy to seriously shocked to downright frustrated at the unforgiving line of questioning. He managed to keep his calm around him, accepted that he could and should have scored at a faster clip, and when the Q & A finally drew to a close, he wore a bewildered look, shaking his head a couple of times as he walked off, accompanied by the media manager and security personnel.
Perhaps, those that asked those questions and those who were present at that press-do have forgotten that night, but it would seem as if Hope hasn’t. And so, he has embarked on a mission to comprehensively silence those who questioned his credentials and his ability that evening.
On this white-ball tour of India, Hope has clearly been the point of difference between the two teams. True, his side went down in the high-scoring One-Day International series 1-2, but the skipper had nothing to do with it, following up a century in game two with an unbeaten 162 in the dead rubber in New Chandigarh when West Indies mounted their highest successful run chase in ODI history.
That did nothing to sate Hope’s hunger. He has been an unstoppable force in the ongoing Twenty20 International series, with centuries in both of his team’s victories, in matches two and four respectively, that has left the showdown finely balanced at 2-2 going into Saturday’s decisive contest in Bengaluru. Since landing in India some three weeks back, Hope’s scores have been 12 (14b), 104 (94) and 162 not out (143) in the ODIs, and 52 (37), 102 not out (45), 5 (5) and 102 not out (50) in the four T20Is. Now, if this isn’t a sequence of extraordinary consistency married with electric firepower, nothing else can be.
Hope has eked out these runs without seeking recourse to the crude and the ugly. He has been wonderfully orthodox, using the straight field as his ally against pacers mainly but also against spin, and leaving the cute and the outrageously muscular to others, teammates and opponents alike. He has taken white-ball batsmanship at the top of the order to a lofty, almost unreachable plane, wowing the connoisseurs with his balance and timing and placement while at the same time wooing the new-age watchers more familiar to unfettered ball-bashing with his repeated trysts with the ‘maximum’ without losing shape when easily clearing the ropes.
Over the years, India have been guilty of letting one batter – at least – from the opposition ranks make merry in a series. The list is long and illustrious and includes, in recent times, the likes of Matthew Hayden and Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting, Sanath Jayasuriya and Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis, Saeed Anwar and even the likes of Rassie van der Dussen and Jimmy Adams, among others. Hope has comfortably, comprehensively, commandingly gate-crashed that group; after all, he does have more than 500 runs in seven limited-overs international innings, with four centuries – two apiece in each of the formats – and has the chance to add significantly more to add to that tally at the historically batter-friendly Chinnaswamy Stadium strip on Saturday night.
In and by itself, his batting, the volume of those runs and the luminescence with which they have come, has been staggering. Throw in the fact that he is the captain of the side and the wicketkeeper who opens the batting in T20Is and is almost right at the top of the order in ODIs, and those deeds are further burnished. If that were possible.
Absolute treat
Watching Hope at work has been an absolute treat. The languid grace that generally naturally comes to a left-hander is an inescapable facet of his time at the middle. There is a certain poetry in motion when he draws his left foot to the pitch of the ball and sends it searing through the covers towards the boundary with minimal effort which takes one’s breath away. When he decides to go aerial down the ground, you can rest assured that the ball is headed in only one direction. Twice in the first two ODIs, he fell to Kuldeep Yadav, trying to take on the wrist-spinner and putting the men inside the circle square and behind square on the off-side in business. Since then, he has hardly put a foot wrong.
Indeed, one can only recall one poor stroke from him in all these outings – the agricultural hoick against Arshdeep Singh in the third T20I in Indore when India defended a target with zeal and gusto. Trying to mow the left-arm pacer bowling from round the stumps with the new ball, Hope lost shape as he showed rare faith in power, the ball sneaking through his slog to hit middle-stump. Arshdeep, the Player of the Match for his three wickets that tilted the balance India’s way, spoke at the end of the game of the specific ‘plans’ the Indians had for all the batters, including for Hope. Perhaps slighted that the Indians would believe they had found a chink in his armour, Hope countered in spectacular fashion in Hyderabad on Wednesday when he joined a small band with three or more T20I centuries.
Until Wednesday, only 13 batters had three hundreds, and only five others – Rohit Sharma and Glenn Maxwell (five each), and Phil Salt, Austria’s Karanbir Singh and Suryakumar (four apiece) – had more T20I three-figure knocks than Hope. Now, he is the latest among the 19 with three or more hundreds, and the odds on him moving level with the trio on four tons in Bengaluru will not be very long. Such has been his focus and his insatiable appetite that there is a touch of the inevitable every time he takes guard – not necessarily a century on each occasion, but definitely a knock of substance. And great style.
Shreyas Iyer and India’s bowlers must be sick and tired of the sight of Hope at the batting crease, but the fans clearly are loving what they are seeing. They have cheered on Hope with gusto, especially in Hyderabad where their ‘local’ heroes — Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan and Nitish Kumar Reddy, all of Sunrisers Hyderabad fame – didn’t provide great joy on Wednesday. In recent times, Indian audiences have tended to greet opposition heroics with total and complete silence, unmindful of the beauty of a stunning innings or the artistry of a magical spell of bowling. That Hope has managed to win them over despite putting their own idols under the cosh is a great tribute to the 32-year-old’s presence in the middle and the humility with which he has gone about his job.
That said, questions need to be asked of India’s preparedness. Of their game plans, of what they have discussed behind closed doors, of the routes they have unlocked to block Hope’s progress. Clearly, whatever they have discussed isn’t working. Whether it is a failure of the tactical group – of Shreyas, head coach Gautam Gambhir and his army of support staff – or of the execution bunch – the Arshdeep-led bowling unit – is a moot point. On the whole, as magical as it has been watching Hope at work, balancing the felicity of a maestro with the precision of a surgeon, it reflects poorly on India that despite so much data and first-hand experience, they haven’t been able to find consistent means to nip Hope masterpieces in the bud.
Hope gets a leave of absence from the Test series in Bangladesh starting later this month, which means Saturday is his last international outing in the immediate future. One final flourish, one last telling statement, to give West Indies a second bilateral series victory over India in three years (they won 3-2 in August 2023) is not in the realms of the fantastic.
