The Independent Voice of West Indies Cricket

The good, bad and ugly of Marlon Samuels

Mon, Jul 20, '20

 

Marlon Samuels

By the time of Marlon Samuel’s infamous fight with Shane Warne at the MCG in 2013, Marlon Samuels was one of my favourite batsmen. I had shivered through a freezing cold fourth day at Lord’s in 2012, watching him blunt England’s world-class bowling attack, and seen him finish the series as its leading run-scorer. Not bad, I thought, for a man written off as an unfulfilled talent.

Four months later, I watched with pure amazement as he played one of the all-time great T20 innings on the biggest stage. West Indies were 38 for 2 after 11 overs of the World T20 final, which seemed to have turned into a coronation for Sri Lanka. Then Samuels unleashed one of the most extraordinary assaults on the world’s best white-ball bowling, carting Lasith Malinga for five towering sixes, each bigger than the last. The fifth was measured at 108 metres.

Not only did he single-handedly salvage the game, he did it in style: forget a high front elbow, he cleared his front leg to open up a huge hitting arc from midwicket through to cover-point, and combined languid with violent to crack the ball off the face of his bat, arms fully extended in an effortless follow-through. To follow that up with a vital spell of off-spin and have his team-mates dust him down in celebration was the icing on the cake.

Read more at Barbados Today