Windies had a bad day at the office, losing to India by 107 runs in Visakhapatnam, but Shai Hope again stood out with a 85-ball 78. Hope has been in rich vein of form in ODIs in 2019, with 1,303 runs in 25 innings at an extremely healthy average of 62.0, making him the second highest scorer in the calendar year. Only Rohit Sharma (1,427) has scored more runs.
After a successful 2018, when Hope scored 875 runs at an average of 67.3, he’s gone on to become the talisman of Windies’ batting line up this year. One of the standout features of his performance has been consistency, with 12 fifty-plus scores in 25 innings in scoring 21% of the team’s runs in ODIs in 2019. Of all players to have played 15+ innings in ODIs this year, no batsman has scored a higher proportion of team’s runs. Hope is becoming expectation.
Across his career, Hope has been extremely successful against spinners and that’s been the trend in 2019 too. The stylish batsman averages 107.6 against the spinners with a very low false shot percentage of 9%.
Very comfortable looking to play off the front foot and back foot, he’s been very strong playing in front of square with 80% of his runs coming in that region and 47% of those coming through mid wicket and long on.
Facing the exceptional set of spinners India have in their lineup, Hope has used his key strengths to take them on and register 180 runs in this series, second again only to Rohit.
Hope is undoubtedly the key man for the tourists and is likely to be required again as the innings anchor in the series decider at Cuttack on Sunday.
-CWI
