Samson’s scintillating knock dumps Windies out of T20 World Cup

San­ju Sam­son pro­duced one of In­dia’s great­est ever bat­ting per­for­mances at a T20 World Cup to pow­er his side to a clin­i­cal five-wick­et vic­to­ry over West In­dies and keep their hopes of de­fend­ing their ti­tle alive.

Play­ing in on­ly his third match of the tour­na­ment, Sam­son belt­ed an un­beat­en 97 off 50 balls as the home side fin­ished on 199 for five in 19.2 overs in re­sponse to the West In­dies’ com­pet­i­tive to­tal of 195 for four in 20 overs.

The win sent them through to the semi­fi­nal stage, where they will face Group 2 win­ners Eng­land on Thurs­day in Mum­bai.

Billed as a show­down be­tween David and Go­liath, the con­test did not dis­ap­point the over 50, 000 fans who packed in­to Eden Gar­dens.

The West In­dies’ sur­prise de­ci­sion to drop out-of-form open­er Bran­don King and re­place him with Akeal Ho­sein, saw all-rounder Ros­ton Chase open­ing the bat­ting for the first time in his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer.

While Chase sur­vived a run out chance when he was just one, and a dropped op­por­tu­ni­ty on 14, he looked flu­ent dur­ing a 68-run open­ing part­ner­ship with cap­tain Shai Hope.

Hope on the oth­er hand, strug­gled through­out his in­nings un­til he was bowled by a quick­er de­liv­ery from spin­ner Varun Chakravarthy af­ter scor­ing 32 off 33 balls.

Shim­ron Het­my­er hit two six­es and a four in rac­ing to 27 off just 12 balls, be­fore he was un­done by a de­liv­ery from Jasprit Bum­rah that grazed the in­side of his bat on the way through to the wick­et­keep­er, to leave the Windies 102 for two in the 12th over.

Bum­rah struck again two balls lat­er, out­fox­ing Chase with a slow­er de­liv­ery that he could on­ly chip to cov­er where cap­tain Suryaku­mar Ya­dav took a sim­ple catch to dis­miss him for 40 off 25 balls, laced with five fours and one six.

When Sher­fane Ruther­ford was caught be­hind off the bowl­ing of Hardik Pandya for 14, the West In­dies were in a spot of both­er at 119 for four in the 15ht over.

How­ev­er, Rov­man Pow­ell and Ja­son Hold­er shared an un­bro­ken part­ner­ship of 76 runs that en­sured the re­gion­al side fin­ished with a flour­ish.

They would have been dis­ap­point­ed not to have got­ten over the 200-run mark, but the last two overs bowled by Ar­shdeep Singh and Bum­rah on­ly yield­ed 20 runs.

Hold­er end­ed on 37 not out from 22 balls with three six­es and two fours, while Pow­ell was un­beat­en on 34 off 19 balls, in­clu­sive of three fours and two six­es.

Un­like the West In­dies, In­dia got off to a fly­ing if not pros­per­ous start in their run chase.

Ab­hishek Shar­ma and Sam­son clob­bered 29 runs off the first three overs, be­fore the for­mer was caught by Het­my­er run­ning back from deep back­ward square leg off the bowl­ing of Ho­sein for 10.

Is­han Kis­han hit two fours in his brief knock of 10, but pulled a de­liv­ery from Hold­er straight in­to the hands of Het­my­er on the deep square leg bound­ary, to leave the home side 41 for two in the fifth over.

Sam­son, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to at­tack, hit­ting Gu­dakesh Motie for two fours in the eighth over and fol­lowed up by smash­ing Ro­mario Shep­herd for a six and four in the next over to move to 48.

He then reached his first half cen­tu­ry of the tour­na­ment off 26 balls by slap­ping Motie for four through point.

To­geth­er with his cap­tain, they added 58 runs in six overs to keep In­dia in the as­cen­dan­cy at 99 for two in the 11th over.

And when Shamar Joseph re­moved Ya­dav for 18, Sam­son found a use­ful part­ner in Tilak Var­ma, with the two putting on 42 runs in four overs.

Hold­er broke the part­ner­ship by get­ting rid of Var­ma for 27 off 15 balls, and when Joseph re­turned to dis­miss Pandya, In­dia re­quired 17 runs from 10 balls.

Shiv­am Dube hit Joseph for two bound­aries to bring the equa­tion down to sev­en runs off the fi­nal over, be­fore Sam­son fit­ting­ly end­ed the match by clob­ber­ing Ro­mario Shep­herd for a six and four off the first two balls, to spark wild cel­e­bra­tions.