By Cosmo Hamilton
Let’s hear the chant folks…. Sammy! Sammy! Sammy! Sammy! Once more with feeling …. Sammy! Sammy! Sammy! The oft times maligned West Indies captain Darren Sammy blamed for everything from the poor showing of the region’s team among Test cricket’s elite teams, to the recent polar vortex weather pattern that dumped a record breaking amount of snow on the New York metropolitan area in what has been a miserable winter, is now well and truly emerging as a hero, and in my view a legend not only in his native St. Lucia but throughout the Caribbean.
The legend emerged in Bangladesh at the 2014 T20 World Cup on Friday as the long, lean, lithe, lethal Lucian skipper steered the good ship Windies loaded with a nervous crew of a certain ‘confident group’ out of murky Australian currents with power and panache blowing the Aussies out of the water with an explosive innings of 34 runs from 14 balls to overhaul the challenging 178 for 9 from 20 overs posted by the men from Downunder with two balls to spare – 179 for 4 in 19.4 overs.
Sammy came into the fray with his team needing 49 runs from 21 balls. And the captain was either hell bent or heaven sent – either way he would not be denied; determined to deliver under pressure as only a rare brand of performers do, wielding his weapon of choice loosely referred to as a bat, to pulverize the pugnacious Australia attack. If Chris Gayle’s robust orchestration provided the overture for this performance with his 53 from 35 balls, Sammy’s colorful cameo was the operatic script, while Dwayne Bravo played second fiddle with 27 off 12 balls.
Indeed the much vaunted Aussies came in for a banging on this day in Bangladesh that for all intents and purposes knocked them out of contention for the 2014 T20 World Cup, in a scenario that must have seemed to them like déjà vu, having been ousted from the 2012 T20 World Cup by these same rampaging, power-hitting upstarts from the Caribbean.
In the bitter end on this faithful Friday, in the final over with West Indies needing 12 runs for an important victory, it was none other than outspoken Australian pacer James Faulkner who was victimized by Sammy. Earlier at the pre-fight weigh-in Faulkner, a 23 year old Tasmanian expressed his distaste for the West Indies. “I don’t particularly like them” said Faulkner. “You have to do things to get under their skin and try and irritate them to try to get them off their game”.
Needless to say a rather focused Sammy got the last laugh and the last dance. After facing two dot balls from Faulkner in the 20th over, the West Indies captain with the precision and timing of a well- crafted swiss watch heaved his third and fourth deliveries well beyond the boundary at the Sher Bangla Stadium into the Dhaka night to precipitate an unbridled celebration Gangnam style by his teammates led by none other than Chris Gayle. It was a celebration fit for a team that had just captured the Holy Grail.
But even if this fired up West Indies squad does not bring home the bacon, those of us who saw the Friday fireworks that exploded from Sammy’s arsenal would not soon forget this epic event which instantly transformed polite neutrality in the colorful stadium into deafening delirium and considerable affection for the men from the Caribbean.
