Breathtaking end to a breathtaking innings

After the excitement of Saturday night and the big game between Pakistan and England at Newlands, I was looking forward to chilling out on Sunday with a half-sartorial eye on the cricket, but there was more than enough action at Pietermaritzburg and Centurion to keep me very, very excited.

I’m not going to go into much detail on the games themselves, as they were incidental to the big hitting and panned out exactly as expected, with India beating Namibia by 181 runs and the West Indies finishing off Canada by 7 wickets. None of the bowling was spectacular, as both were flat out hitting tracks offering very little to the bowlers, but it was just one of those weird days in cricket where everyone made a bunch of big, big runs.

Let’s start with the records, which mostly came from the Windies/Canada game.

The West Indies won the toss at Centurion and sent the Canadians in to bat, no doubt hoping to knock them over quickly, get the runs required even faster, and be back at the hotel in time for lunch and marijuana. But the Canadians had other ideas, and after a quiet start from openers Ishwar Maraj and John Davison, with Davison hooking and missing at a couple of short balls, history suddenly provided a wormhole for Davison to wriggle through and disturb the balance of world cricket.

It took Davison 11 balls to reach the boundary, but once he’d broken it he went off, scoring the fastest ever hundred in the history of World Cup cricket, and the fifth fastest ODI century of all time. His fifty was the third-fastest in World Cup history, but this was to be smashed later during the Windies innings — twice.

Davison (32) is an Australian who was born in Canada, but lived there for the grand total of five weeks before his parents went back to Australia, where he has remained ever since. So only five weeks separates him and me from Canadian citizenship, which just goes to show.

He joined the Australian Cricket Academy in 1993 and has played first-class cricket there ever since, for Victoria and South Australia. His highest score to date in first-class cricket was 72, which means his extraordinary World Cup ton was his first century ever.

Because of his birth in Canada he was headhunted by the Canadian authorities and asked to help them qualify for the World Cup, which he duly did after permission from his provincial side. He played for them in the 1999 ICC Trophy, helping them to third place in the competition, which qualified them for this World Cup.

He made 31 the other day against Kenya, but Sunday was his day, and one which will remain in the history books for a very long time.

Davison reached his hundred off 67 balls, smashing the record for the fastest World Cup hundred of 72 balls, held by India’s Kapil Dev since 1983. His innings included seven 4’s and six 6’s, and like all big innings’s he had his fair share of luck. He was dropped on 50, had the ball roll onto his leg stump without taking off the bales when he was on 71, and was dropped again on 76, in another woeful display from the Windies in the field.

But big scores like that don’t happen without a modicum of luck, and the lady was smiling on Davison on Sunday. He finally got out going for one more six, and it took one of the best ever ODI catches to get rid of him. Vasbert Drakes backwheeled to the boundary, misjudged the ball, and had to leap up and backwards to pluck the ball from the air inches before the boundary rope, finishing off with an acrobatic tuck and roll in mid-air to ensure the ball stayed in his hand.

A breathtaking end to a breathtaking innings.

Davison’s first wicket stand with Maraj of 96 was the highest ever opening stand for Canada in ODI’s, his second-wicket partnership of 60 with Desmond Chumney was the best-ever for Canada in ODI’s, his 111 was the highest score ever by a Canadian in an ODI, and the total of 202 was the highest ever achieved by Canada in ODI’s.

Which all adds up to a good day for Canada, who have proved more than a handful this World Cup, and are undoubtedly one of the teams of the tournament. All they need to do is club together all the good individual performances they’re turned out this World Cup, and put them all into one game, and they’ll beat anyone. Seriously.

No matter what else happens to them, Canada are going home heroes, and John Davison is going back to Aus to seal his position in his side. Never will he be left out again.

The original idea behind the Windies sending Canada in to bat first was to knock them over quickly and get the runs quickly, and although the first part went horribly wrong courtesy of some bad bowling, fielding, and John Davison, they stuck to their game plan for their innings, and the records started flowing again.

Wavell Hinds and Brian Lara were far, far better than Davison, offering absolutely no chances in two flawless, big-hitting innings.

After Chris Gayle failed once again Lara joined Hinds at the crease for an explosive, mean partnership, which smashed Canada out of the game. Hinds scored the fastest ever World Cup fifty (24 balls, including seven 4’s and three 6’s) – six balls faster than Davison earlier in the day. He hit some of the hardest square cuts I have ever seen, and lofted it effortlessly over the fielders at will.

Enter Lara, who in turn beat Hinds’s 50 by one ball – getting his in 23 balls, making his and Hinds’s the two quickest ever World Cup fifties. Lara got to 73 off 40 balls, and Hinds was out for 64 off 31 balls, and by then it was up to Ramnaresh Sarwan to finish it off, which he did by making 42* off 32 balls.

The Windies got the Canada total in 20.3 overs, or at roughly 10 to the over, and although the day was over early no crowd has ever had that much entertainment. In total there were 42 fours and 15 sixes – a staggering 258 runs in boundaries.

Some batting, and good results for the Windies, Canada and the Crowd.

The second match was less dramatic, but the batting just as impressive, featuring centuries from Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, taking the Ton Tally for the day to three.

Fortunately India got to bat first at the picturesque Pietermaritzburg Stadium, as the Namibian batting was nowhere near a match for the Indian bowling, and Sachin and Sourav made hay of the bowling, taking India to a good tally of 311/2.

Sachin made the second-highest score of the World Cup – 152 – off 151 balls, and Ganguly batted through the innings to get 112* and a serious average boost.

Unlike Davison, Hinds and Lara, Tendulkar and Ganguly played controlled innings’s, with some of the cleanest strokemaking and hitting of the tournament. Tendulkar offered one chance which was not accepted, but otherwise was flawless, stroking 18 boundaries mostly up the ground and along it. Ganguly accelerated towards the end of his innings, ending up with six 4’s and four 6’s.

Neither batsman was overly rash, both scoring easily, fluently and without a trace of the uncertainty that has plagued the Indian batting for the last few months.

When Tendulkar got his hundred he became the first player ever to score ODI hundreds against ten nations (Gary Kirsten has achieved the same feat in Tests — also the only person ever to do so). It was also his highest score in World Cups, eclipsing his previous highest of 140* against Kenya in the ’99 World Cup.

The two innings’s were a cricket purists’ fantasy fulfilled in real life. So a runs fest it was, and a merry time was had by all. Some big games are coming up this week, notably England vs India on Wednesday in Durban, Sri Lanka vs the West Indies at Newlands on Friday, and Pakistan vs India on Saturday. Another good game to look out for will be Kenya vs Bangladesh on Saturday, which will be an evenly-matched, intense affair in Jo’burg.

Any which direction you look at it from, though — this has been one hell of a World Cup so far.

And the beat goes on.

Cheers,

The Twelfth Man