All the hype (including it must be confessed, here) leading up to Sunday’s T20I between West Indies had been about local hero Chris Gayle’s recall to the hosts’ team. However, it was his fellow opening batsman Evin Lewis that stole all the headlines during the game itself.
Prior to tonight’s game in Jamaica, only two men had ever scored more than one T20I centuries. The Universe Boss himself, and New Zealand’s former captain Brendon McCullum had previously achieved this.
There are now three, with Trinidadian Evin Lewis’s astonishing 125 not-out off 62 balls leading the home team to a comfortable 9-wicket victory over Virat Kohli’s Indians with nine balls to spare.
Evin had previously hit a 20-over century against the very same opponents in Florida in August 2016. He is the only player to have two centuries in the shortest format against the same opponents.
With this being the only game in the series, the reigning world T20 champions West Indies also claimed a series victory, in some consolation to losing the five-game ODI series 3-1 earlier in the month.
No other players notched up any particular personal milestones in this game. Virat Kohli fell short of the 71 runs he needed to move up to 4th place in the all-time run scorers list, and Samuel Badree going wicketless when two scalps would have seen him join Dwayne Bravo as the West Indies all-time leading T20I wicket-taker.