Sammy hails ‘Greatest’ Hope ahead of 150th ODI milestone

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Jun 5, – As Shai Hope pre­pares to step on­to the field for his 150th One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al at Sabi­na Park on Sat­ur­day, West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my has lav­ished praise on the cap­tain, call­ing him one of the finest bats­men the re­gion has ever pro­duced in the 50-over for­mat.

“He’s been lead­ing the bat­ting for us over the last three to four years. I see him as one of our great­est ODI bats­men,” Sam­my said. “His record, his con­sis­ten­cy, hav­ing been here work­ing with him, see­ing him work, there’s no sur­prise to me about the num­bers he puts out there.”

Hope, who av­er­ages over 50 in ODIs, a feat that places him among the glob­al top 10, has earned Sam­my’s ad­mi­ra­tion not just for the runs, but for the re­lent­less prepa­ra­tion be­hind them.

The right-han­der has scored 19 cen­turies and 31 half-cen­turies, with his high­est score be­ing 170 vs Ire­land.

“He pays a lot of at­ten­tion to de­tails with his prepa­ra­tion, and he works re­al­ly hard to be con­sis­tent,” Sam­my added. “So con­grats to you, Shai, on this mile­stone, and hope­ful­ly you and the rest of the team can make it a vic­to­ri­ous one.”

The mile­stone match al­so car­ries se­ri­ous se­ries im­pli­ca­tions. Af­ter falling be­hind 1-0 to Sri Lan­ka, the West In­dies need a win in the sec­ond ODI to square the three-match con­test at 1-1. And Sam­my has iden­ti­fied a clear area for im­prove­ment.

“I thought we def­i­nite­ly have to play their spin much bet­ter,” he said, point­ing to the first game where Sri Lan­ka’s spin­ners con­ced­ed just 68 runs off 20 overs. “Some of the key points we high­light­ed be­fore the se­ries were that we have to find ways to score off op­po­nents’ slow bowlers, and that will make a big dif­fer­ence.”

Sam­my re­mained con­fi­dent de­spite the ear­ly set­back, not­ing that this West In­dies side has bounced back be­fore.

“We’ve been in po­si­tions like this be­fore for some of the se­ries we’ve won at home, and come back stronger. So, that’s what we’re look­ing to do.”

Fol­low­ing the three ODIs against Sri Lan­ka on June 3, 6 and 8 the sides will play three T20Is, al­so in Ja­maica, fol­lowed by two Tests in An­tigua. CMC