West Indies NAT One Day Tour 2- Division 2 Summaries
West Indies vs India
West Indies and India were facing each other in Round 4 of Division 2, and the match had a qualification spot to Division 1 at stake. Qualification for Division 1 would quite heavily boost the World Cup Qualification chances for both the sides, as teams will have to gear up for the EOS 48 World Cup after the Twenty-20 World Cup at the end of this season. The Indian side has been pretty strong, ending finalists in the World Cup, having a blip with a winless One Day Tour to relegate, but coming back to win all of their Twenty-20 and all One-Dayers in this tour till here. West Indies lost their first toss of the tour, and Indian captain Aravind Kadiwala chose that he'd rather have his team set a target for the West Indian side. The worn-out pitches and the tired players by Round 4, suggest that batting gets tougher in the second half of the games in the final rounds, but West Indies had perfected three chases in the tour thus far, and were set for another.
Sugrim Hughes took the new ball for West Indies, and got a wicket ball one. He continued bowling nagging lines to irritate the batsmen, and the odd-snorter that he bowled, forced Indian Batsmen Shiva Maneesh to mistime his pull, giving Hughes his second scalp for the day. Two wickets down in the powerplay, Indian batters Chaitanya Grover and Mandeep Suratwala stitched a 113-run stand to stage a comeback, but Aaron Munilall and Satish Philips sent them back off of consecutive overs. Edgar Outridge got another wicket a couple overs later, and Sugrim Hughes got Parimal Shreshta off of a beautiful yorker as Shreshta seemed to look for big hits to switch the run rate up. All-rounder Saurav Sahar was the final hurdle West Indies had, and he hit a quick 53 runs off of 45 balls, before Sugrim Hughes got him and Sunil Waghela out in his final over to finish his fifer. India hit a total of 247 in their fifty, and Sugrim Hughes was the pick of the innings, ending with the figures of 10-2-34-5.
Chasing 248, West Indies began the chase off on the wrong foot, losing a wicket every third run. The stood at 9/3 after 4 overs, with Martin Marshall, Hubert Newton and Floyd Doctrove back in the hut. Melford Griffith, who had been struggling this tour, got his first score in the double digits, before he was wrongly adjudged LBW for 33 runs. West Indies were four down for 73 runs, and Len Thomas joined hands with Colin Eugene. The two shared a 70-run partnership, before Thomas edged his drive to point off of quick Pravand Murgan. The oldest in the squad, Edgar Outridge, was under this pressure of finishing a chase off for the second time in the tour, and he played his part well, scoring a few quick runs to up the scoring rate a little, before having his stumps rattled by Taj D'Argento's pace looking for a big loft. Colin Eugene also lost his wicket after a masterpiece 89-run knock, looking to get a few boundaries.
West Indies needed 60 runs off 64 balls, and on one end was Aaron Munilall, who had done a very good job at finishing chases off late, and on the other was the man of hour, Sugrim Hughes, and he could simply do no wrong. Aaron Munilall took charge, and knowing that boundaries weren't as easy to find, he ran 37 of his 45 runs, before edging one to the keeper when Taj D'Argento bowled a cutter, and gifting him his fifer in the penultimate over. The equation boiled down to five runs off six balls, and Sugrim Hughes, the man who could do no wrong today, who had already hit two fours in his innings, hit a well-placed french cut for three runs on the very first ball of the final over. Captain Peter Griffin scored a single, and Sugrim Hughes mishit an attempted six for a single to win West Indies the game and a Division 1 spot.
Other Results in Division 2
Bangladesh beat Australia by 47 runs.
Canada beat Pakistan by 7 wickets.
Fixture on May 7: Bangladesh
West Indies play Bangladesh in their final fixture on an Uneven deck and under Cloudy weather. Bangladesh will look to come up strong against the West Indies to make the most of their opportunity to qualify for Division 1.
Scenarios
West Indies has qualified to Division 1, but the battle for the second spot is still pretty interesting. India need to beat Canada to qualify, whereas Canada needs to beat India by more than a certain margin to beat them on net run rate to qualify. Bangladesh are the third side that can qualify, and they need to beat West Indies by a massive margin given that their net run rate is currently negative, and also hope that Canada beat India. Pakistan have already relegated, and Australia, Bangladesh and Canada all run the risk of being the other side to relegate.