Published: Feb 24, 2015, 08:24 PM (IST)
Edited: Feb 24, 2015, 08:27 PM (IST)
It was a 19 month draught for Chris Gayle without a One-Day International (ODI) century, which is indeed a lot for a player of his calibre, rather ability. On the eve of the match between West Indies and Zimbabwe at Canberra, West Indian skipper Jason Holder said that if Chris Gayle gets going at the top, the team score may near the 400 mark. On Tuesday, that’s what happened. Gayle not only got going but scored the first double hundred in a cricket World Cup as West Indies pulled off an empathic win against Zimbabwe.
Electing to bat first, West Indies lost their first wicket with no runs on the board after Dwayne Smith was cleaned up. Gayle almost followed him back and survived a very close leg-before call. The wicket didn’t look very easy to bat and West Indies consolidated well and after 20 overs, they were 96 for one. Gayle played his shots, while Samuels was crawling along with a strike-rate even struggling to reach 50.
Even at the end of the 39th over, the West Indies score was 203 for one and in the last 11 overs, they managed to score 169 runs! They ended with 372 for two, with Gayle getting out for 215 in the last ball of the innings. Gayle played a total of 147 balls and his innings contained 10 fours, 16 sixes and 59 dot balls. Samuels who completely looked out of sorts for the major part of his innings, ended with an unbeaten 133. The duo kept tumbling records. Gayle became the first double centurion in World Cup, and his score now stands third in the list, behind Rohit Sharma and Virender Sehwag. It was the first double hundred in ODIs by a non-Indian batsman and out of India. He also equalled the 16 sixes feat by Rohit Sharma and AB de Villiers. During his knock, he crossed 9000 ODI runs, becoming only the second West Indian after Brian Lara to do so.
Gayle and Samuels added a 372 runs stand for the first wicket and in doing so they first toppled the partnership record stand of 318, between India’s Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid at Taunton in 1999 World Cup and later surpassed the record ODI stand of 331 between Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar.
It wasn’t going to be easy for the Zimbabwean batsmen to come close to the total and that too under lights but they posed a good fight. They kept playing the catch-up and were never in the contest. However they fought on. Their heroes of the UAE match – Sean Williams and Craig Ervine, once again showed a lot of courage but in the end, all they managed was 289. Their chase was reduced by two overs due to rain at Canberra and eventually Zimbabwe lost the match by 73 runs in Duckworth Lewis method. The Gayle-storm pushed the African side down in the points table in Pool B to the fifth position.
Brief scores:
West Indies 372 for 2 in 50 overs (Chris Gayle 215, Marlon Samuels 133*) bt Zimbabwe 289 in 44.2 overs (Sean Williams 76, Craig Ervine 52; Jerome Taylor 3-38, Jason Holder 3-48, Chris Gayle 2-35) by 73 runs (D/L method)
