Samuels Comes of Age

There are moments in time when history is made. Moments when all the cosmic stars line up for one individual, on this planet rock we call the earth. The first in that series of moments occurred when the West Indies selectors -- Joey Carew, Michael Findlay and Joel Garner -- plucked Marlon Samuels from relative obscurity at the age of 19, not yet a fixture on the Jamaica first class team, as a replacement for Shivnarine Chanderpaul on the disastrous 2000/01 tour of Australia.
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Since then Samuels has battled injury and the wiles of Muralitharan and Vaas, and one thing that can now be deduced, his confidence has remained unshaken.

Samuels appears so eager to bat that he is one of the few players in world cricket today who is out on the field before the dismissed batsman in the shadows of the player's enclosure. Thus, when he strode past Wavell Hinds in the seventh ODI international on his way out to the middle, barely acknowledging him, I appeared that he was already 'in the zone'.
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What followed is the stuff that legends are built on. It was brutal domination with a bat wielded like a rapier. India was not so much clubbed to death as they were sliced, diced and fricasseed by Samuels?s brutal, yet beautiful, assault.

After carefully taking about three overs to play himself in, he signaled what was to come by getting down on one knee to launch Kartik over the square leg fence for the maximum.
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Consider that the first 31 balls he faced produced 19 runs, and his entire innings encompassed a mere seventy-five balls. In other words, after starting off at a relatively modest strike rate of 61.29, Samuels upped his strike rate to a whopping 202.27 over the next forty-four balls. Now I am no statistician, but I'm willing to wager that that is one of the best strike rates in ODI cricket, for any portion of a batsman's innings.
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Samuels continued to punish anything loose, and even stuff that was not so loose was dealt with handily. He was particularly severe on Srinath, facing nine balls from him and taking 30 from hem, including the 47th over when the veteran pacer went for 21 runs. His first half-century came off an even 50 balls, and the second 50 came off a mind-boggling 22 balls.
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Consider that a few short weeks ago, Samuels was all packed and ready to return to the Caribbean in disgrace. Were it not for the prescient intervention of the WICB president Wes Hall, this may have been one more wasted overseas tour, ending in abject defeat in both forms of the game, for the West Indies team.
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Speculation was rife about the red rag that Samuels pulled from his pocket and waved above his head on the completion of his first ODI hundred, however, it turned out that it was a gesture of goodwill and admiration of batting potential from no less a light than Steve Waugh, who should be able to recognize a world class player when he sees one. Everything that followed Samuels knock was anti-climactic, even a stand out performance by Jermaine Lawson, yet another talented Jamaican cricketer, who
unlike Samuels, actually made it all the way back to the Caribbean until common sense and Cameron Cuffy's dubious fitness level contrived to bring him back to India.
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The selectors need to be aware that fate will not always be so kind to them, and that they need to pick the right players for the right occasion. Cricket is still first and foremost a wicket-taking game, and when you have young eager players, they have to be let loose on the opposition.

With the World Cup in the offing, I'm sure that the other teams involved will be seriously scouting Gayle, Samuels, Sarwan and Hinds, along with the old stagers of Chanderpaul and Hooper.

Marlon Samuels and the West Indies have served notice that together they will make their presence felt, the youngsters are stepping to the fore, and it feels good!