England hit 418 ...and just win!
The Universe Boss may have stamped his authority on one of the best of all the 100 one-day internationals staged between these teams with another dazzling display of six- hitting, but ultimately england were triumphant because they had Universe Jos.
What an extraordinary game this fourth ODI became and how close Chris Gayle came to upstaging one of the best one-day innings an englishman has played — a scintillating 150 by the uniquely talented Jos Buttler.
When it ended, the vibrant Grenadian crowd had seen more than 800 runs, with no fewer than 46 sixes. But it was a bowler — Adil Rashid — who had the final word by taking the last four wickets in five balls just as West Indies were looking to provide a final compelling twist.
This seemed destined to be all about Buttler, who electrified the crowd with a sublime ton to take england to their fourth score of more than 400 since they threw off the shackles four years ago and became the best one-day side in the world. Yet for so long it then looked as though West Indies would pull off the second-highest chase in history, with Gayle making his second century of the series and adding 14 more sixes to the 12 he smashed in Barbados.
Only when Ben Stokes, who had gone for 53 in his first four overs, returned to bowl Gayle for 162 could england afford to breathe more easily but they still needed Rashid to snuff out the last embers of West Indies’ fire and secure a 29-run victory.
‘That’s as tough a day as we’ve ever had,’ said england captain eoin Morgan. ‘It was almost a hundred overs of crazy, intense cricket. It’s something we’ve never come up against before. West Indies are a lot stronger than the rankings suggest so it’s been a great challenge for us.’
First things first. What Buttler did in smashing that 150 off 77 balls, moving from 50 to 150 in a quite ridiculous 32 deliveries, was the stuff of dreams.
‘That was right up there,’ he said. ‘It’s really special when you feel you’re in that zone. I asked Joe Root what he thought we needed and he said north of 350 so when we had 13 or 14 overs left it was time to get on with it.’
Buttler smashed 12 of england’s 24 sixes, beating the world record set last week by West Indies in Barbados, as they powered to their highest score in an overseas one-day international. A remarkable 154 of their 418 for six came off the last 10 overs.
West Indies simply had no answer to Buttler, who had given little hint of what was to come when he went to 50 off little more than a run a ball after Jonny Bairstow and Alex hales, replacing the injured Jason Roy, had motored to rapid half-centuries. The acceleration came quite spectacularly when Buttler, promoted above Stokes to five, joined Morgan to add 204 in 21 overs of complete carnage that brought West Indies to their knees.
It says everything about Buttler’s freakish performance that Morgan, the original freak of one- day shotmaking, became the first batsman to go past 6,000 50-over runs for england during his first century for almost two years yet was completely overshadowed. This, indeed, was Morgan’s seventh score of 50 or more in his last nine innings as he moved to 103 off 88 balls with six sixes of his own.
But this was indisputably the Buttler show. And the biggest and second fastest of his seven one-day hundreds was achieved with pure hitting of the cleanest kind, with little of the innovation that has seen Buttler become the epitome of modern cricket.
There was even a cheeky little salute at the ground where Marlon Samuels once provocatively saluted Stokes after one six off Sheldon Cottrell, who had the audacity to celebrate Morgan’s wicket with his trademark military routine.
Buttler was not perfect. he was dropped by John Campbell at deep point on 93 and then caught on 107 only for the dismissal to be ruled out because of a waist high no-ball from Jason holder. But this was simply sublime.
If anyone thought the end of Buttler would spell the end of the day’s entertainment they were badly mistaken for whatever he could do then Gayle could certainly emulate. When the Universe Boss hit Rashid for his 500th international six he reached 10,000 runs in one-day cricket and when he went to his fastest 50-over hundred, astonishingly with a quick single, the rare sight here of a West Indian majority in the crowd went wild.
every bowler suffered in the onslaught apart from the heroic figure of Mark Wood, who did almost as much as Buttler to take england home. Wood took the first four wickets and lured the pretender to Gayle’s West Indies batting crown, Shimron hetmyer, to his demise second ball for six by keeping his nerve and again banging it in short after being walloped over the ropes.
While Gayle was there West Indies had hope but once he had gone it was left to Carlos Brathwaite, who hit Stokes for four sixes to win the World Twenty20 three years ago, to attempt one last twist.
he could not quite do it when Rashid cleaned up the tail but how close it was and what a display from Buttler and Gayle, two contrasting masters of the batting art, with 26 sixes between them.