It is not long since Marlon Samuels was a poster boy for what had gone wrong with West Indies cricket.
On Sunday, he was its redemptive hero, as West Indies won the World Twenty20 by defeating the host, Sri Lanka, by 36 runs in Colombo.
The 31-year-old Jamaican batted brilliantly in conditions that were too much for almost every other batsman. His compatriot Chris Gayle scratched around glumly for only three runs from 15 deliveries, while the Sri Lanka captain, Mahela Jayawardene, usually the epitome of unorthodox elegance, was reduced to a series of ugly lunges, the last of which spooned the ball for an easy catch.
“Samuels was the difference,” said the former England captain Nasser Hussain, commentating for Sky Sports television. “No one else really found their timing on this pitch.”
Samuels scored 78 runs, more than half of the West Indies total of 137 for 8 from its 20 six-ball overs and more than twice as many as the next-highest score, Jayawardene’s 33, in the match. He rescued the West Indians from a disastrous start
Most teams hope to score around 40 runs from the opening six overs, a period in which there are limits on how many fielders the bowling side can place in run-saving outfield positions. West Indies scored 14, and lost two wickets, including Gayle. It managed only 32 from its first 10.
Samuels shifted the momentum with a remarkable assault on Lasith Malinga, the unorthodox round-arm flamethrower, who is considered to be one of the toughest bowlers to hit in world cricket. Five times, Samuels struck him for sixes. Malinga conceded a total of 54 runs from his four overs.
“Marlon batted very well,” said Jayawardene. “I backed my No. 1 bowler to deliver, but Marlon batted very well.”
Yet when Samuels was out, caught on the boundary, he walked off seemingly close to tears. It seemed that all he had done was spare his team a complete humiliation. The late assault by the West Indies captain, Darren Sammy, which lifted its total to 137, seemed little more than damage limitation.
Even when Ravi Ramphal dismissed the dangerous Tillakaratne Dilshan in Sri Lanka’s first over, the host was still the favorite. Dilshan’s loss brought together Sri Lanka’s best batsmen, Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, players of immense experience and talent who hold the all-time record for the highest single-wicket partnership in cricket history.
Yet even they could not find fluency, and when they tried to accelerate, both fell.
Six wickets went down for 21 runs, reducing Sri Lanka to 69 for 7 and a vibrant, full-capacity crowd to near silence. Nuwan Kulasekara got them roaring again by striking Ramphal for 18 runs from four deliveries, but once he fell, the end was a matter of time.
Samuels contributed with the ball as well, conceding only 15 runs from four overs of deceptively unthreatening spin and taking the wicket of Ajantha Mendis.
It made for one of the easiest Man of the Match decisions of all time, completing an extraordinary year for Samuels. He was famous as a wasted talent, a man who played test cricket at 19 but had been in and out of the West Indies team for a decade and served a two-year suspension for questionable contact with an Indian bookmaker.
Restored to the team this year, he scored 386 runs in five innings against England’s formidable pace attack, then added 123 at home in Kingston in a five-day test against New Zealand timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence. As prodigals go, he takes some beating.
The final showed that even cricket’s shortest format has the capacity for remarkable changes in fortune. The result maintains the tradition — broken only by India’s victory in the World Cup last year — that host teams do not win cricket’s global tournaments, and it also lengthened Sri Lanka’s miserable record in finals. It has made it to the final of the last two World Cups and two out of the last three World Twenty20s, but lost them all.
This one, because of its location and the incredible change in fortunes during the match, will hurt more than the others.
Before the day was done, Jayawardene said he was stepping down as the Sri Lankan captain, though he would continue playing Twenty20. “I think we need a young leader,” Jayawardene said.
It is West Indies’ biggest trophy since 1979 — when it won its second World Cup — and its greatest day since the 1980s and 1990s, when it dominated five-day tests.
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