If you didn’t hear it from his mouth, Shai Hope summed up his love for batting with his 11th One Day International century on Monday.
Hope’s 130-ball 119 not out, steered West Indies to a seven-wicket win over Netherlands in the first ODI of the three-match series.
After the match when asked what was the key to batting, Hope responded, “It’s just about going out there and enjoying your batting, I love batting so any chance I get to bat I’m going to try and stay out there as long as I can.”
This has paid dividends already as Hope moved to fourth on the list of West Indies batsmen’s tally of centuries in the format, only behind Chris Gayle (25), Brian Lara (19) and Desmond Haynes (17). He has however, equalled that of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Vivian Richards and Gordon Greenidge, all of whom opened at some point in their career.
“As an opener we all know the key is to see off the new ball and build a foundation for the team and that’s my priority whenever I go out there to bat and the key is to stay as long as I can and get the team over the line,” he explained.
Overall, only 37 batsmen in the history of ODIs have scored more centuries than Hope while his current average of 52.12 is only bettered by Babar Azam (59), Virat Kholi (58) and AB De Villiers (53.5).
Hope, however, acknowledged that despite the victory, West Indies can always improve. “I think there is always areas to improve, I don’t think there is ever a perfect team so you can always go back and review and see where we can get better, that one per cent better so we just make sure we are ticking those boxes come the next game and hopefully we can take a step up.”
The vice-captain credited the efforts of the bowlers to peg the innings back as Netherlands got off to a good start and noted that they will need to adapt a bit faster so they can score more and make early inroads in order to come out successful in the second match.
