The term ‘puncher’s chance’ has been thrown around in sports quite a lot in favour of the underdogs, who on their day- be it by luck of stroke or brilliance- can inspire knock out blows over their more favoured opponents.
And though West Indies’ chance of winning the World Cup is slim as you would imagine, they are not quite out of it and can produce the kind of bullish performance that can take them over the line against the best in the business.
The issue with Caribbean side, however, is replicating those ‘whirlwind performances’, game after game to fall into the conversation as serious title contenders.
Yesterday’s remarkable feat of scoring 421 during their win over New Zealand in their final warm-up fixture will surely put the world on notice, especially the Caribbean fanbase who are hoping for that kind of reciprocity to upstage the likes of England, India, Australia and even New Zealand a second time.
But keep in mind, there is no discrediting the fact they do have a puncher’s chance.
But one questions whether it would be enough to carry them into the final four in a format where consistent, quality cricket is needed, knowing how streaky they can be.
Perhaps they might be able to pull it off.
What we do know about this West Indies side though is that it is immensely talented and if there is one high point about the win over New Zealand is that it provided a blueprint for West Indies to operate moving forward.
For me, that win over the Black Caps suggest that the top five in Chris Gayle, Evin Lewis, the prolific Shai Hope – who I admit wasn’t in my World Cup squad a year ago purely because of the strike rate which has improved – Darren Bravo and Shimron Hetmyer will have to pull out consistent subline performances to give what is relatively ordinary bowling attach, some respite. After all, yesterday they made 421 runs and won by 91 runs.
Lower order contributions from Andre Russell, skipper Jason Holder, Carlos Braithwaite and Ashley Nurse are also key.
The bowling, as mentioned before, will need plenty of assistance from the batters or the likes of Sheldon Cottrell, Kemar Roach and Oshane Thomas, during the course of the tournament, will have to exceed expectations.
In doing so, the trio along with the all-rounders will have to push their economy and strikes rates, respectively in the opposite direction, synchronizing their efforts with the batters to hand West Indies their third world title after almost four decades.
They open their campaign against Pakistan on Friday.
