There was a certain and satisfying sense of déjà vu for the West Indies at the Oval on Monday night.
As Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan reversed their team’s usual mantra and calmly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to secure a semi-final place in the World Twenty20, it could have been a replay of the Champions Trophy final of 2004.
The venue was the same, the opponents the same, the backdrop the same for, just as they had been leading into this tournament, they had been whipped from pillar to post by England in the preceding Test series and whitewashed 4-0.
Even the combination of level-headed batsmen whose ninth wicket partnership of 71 off 15.1 overs carried them to their first triumph in a global series for the first time since the 1979 World Cup was the same, Courtney Browne right-handed, as Sarwan, and Ian Bradshaw, left-handed like Chanderpaul.
If Browne, the wicket-keeper, and Bradshaw, the tall, slim all-rounder, lacked the pedigree of the 2009 heroes, their method was the same. They simply held their nerve and achieved their goal through basic, sensible cricket.
The newest and shortest form of the game doesn’t comfortably fit the styles of Chanderpaul and Sarwan. They are touch players, dependent on timing and placement rather than the intimidating power that is the preserve of captain Chris Gayle.
Chanderpaul had one season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and opted out. He thrives on long innings, very long as opponents have discovered over the years, especially the last two. At 20 overs, he would usually just be bedding down for another extended stay.
Sarwan may be freer and a batsman with an ODI average of 43. But he couldn’t find a buyer at auction for the recent IPL renewal in South Africa, even at a knockdown price of $200,000.
Neither had done much in the tournament before Monday. Sarwan was not even required in the victory over India in the first match of the Super8 round.
On that evidence, and ignoring the value of experience, the West Indies sent in their big hitters first. It was a misguided policy that almost backfired.
Andre Fletcher, Lendl Simmons and Keiron Pollard are naïve newcomers, hardly a year into their international careers, still unaware of the requirements of the situation they now confronted.
Without putting too fine a point on it, all were out swiping, Fletcher for his third successive duck.
With Gayle despatched by Ryan Sidebottom’s wicked yorker and another potential match-winner, Dwayne Bravo, undone by Graeme Swann’s straight ball and James Foster’s swift stumping, the match was slipping out of West Indies’ grasp at 45 for five after 5.2 overs.
Englishmen on the field and those who packed the stands sensed the result that would bring them back to the Oval on Friday for the semi-final.
West Indian sanity was restored by Chanderpaul and Sarwan. Another 35 were needed off 28 balls when the two Guyanese came together, an equation they instinctively knew was straightforward, requiring only composed application.
Chanderpaul settled in with four singles, Sarwan with a two and three singles. Suddenly Sarwan produced two strokes off successive balls from James Anderson that proclaimed his quality, a drive over extra-cover and a wristy deflection, both for boundaries.
The pendulum had swung and was not to swing the other way again, Sarwan fittingly clinching the result with his third boundary, to extra-cover, off Sidebottom’s second ball of the final over.
Of the 38 the two added, there were 11 singles, three twos, a three – and not a single six. They are statistics that need to be noted by their young teammates.
Even before Sarwan’s final blow had reached the ropes, jubilant West Indian players sprinted onto the ground to acclaim Chanderpaul and Sarwan who, themselves, had been among the celebrants five years ago charging out of the pavilion to embrace Browne and Bradshaw.
A few hundred West Indian supporters located immediately behind the team’s benches (as opposed to the thousands who once packed this ground in the heart of their territory), were delirious with delight, just as they were when the Champions Trophy was won.
Such events, once so common for West Indies, are now few and far between.
When they come along, they are to be doubly savoured. Perhaps there will be more on Friday in the semi-final at the same venue and, whisper it softly, on Sunday in the final at Lord’s.
