Garth Wattley In Port of Spain
A sellout crowd of 20,000 left the Queen’s Park Oval happy and satisfied as their West Indies team surged to a seven wicket victory over Sri Lanka to clinch the three-match Digicel One-day International series with a game to spare.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul repeated his superb effort of the first ODI, with 52 not out (42 balls, three fours, two sixes). He fashioned an unbroken fourth wicket partnership of 107 off just 90 balls with the equally outstanding Marlon Samuels (54, 49 balls, three fours, three sixes) as the West Indies chased down a revised Duckworth/Lewis target of 125. They won with 4.3 overs to spare.
The fans who waited through two stoppages for rain that limited Sri Lanka to 30 overs and three balls and left the Windies with a maximum 25 overs to bat, were treated to a
spectacular display of shot-making from two very different players. It was the final spoiling of the T&T posse.
Yesterday made it a clean sweep of Test and one-day games for the Windies at the Oval this season.
Gayle and his squad will leave here today for St Lucia for the final ODI on Tuesday with their confidence sky high and their reputations as a team on the rise, enhancing day by day.
Samuels certainly boosted his stocks with a timely command performance.
He played throughout the two Test matches and three ODIs with misconduct proceedings concerning his alleged association with an Indian bookmaker still not concluded. But yesterday, West Indies’s top batsman on the tour of South Africa, who had managed a mere 25 runs in five innings this international season, finally stroked his way out of his slump.