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.
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