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The next time you hear a lament for the decline of West Indies cricket - and even with a palpable improvement in the Test side in recent years, you seldom have to wait long - consider this: in the most popular version of the sport, the West Indies are the reigning men’s world champions. Indeed, they have won two of the past three Twenty20 World Cups, reaching the semi-finals in between. Their players have consistently been among the most coveted in the Indian Premier League and other major T20 leagues around the world. The West Indies have also done more than anywhere else to shape how T20 is played. No-one has grasped the fundamental worth of the currency of the six in T20 with the same relish as Chris Gayle, the Bradman of T20. Kieron Pollard’s brutal hitting at the death recalibrated how run chases were viewed, a process that Andre Russell is now taking to a new level. Samuel Badree was the first front-line spinner to routinely bowl three overs during the Powerplay, an under-appreciated titan who transformed the art of spin bowling. Sunil Narine, a fellow Trinidadian spinner, is so good that he is formidable bowling in all three phases of a T20 - the Powerplay, the middle overs and the death. Already one of the two greatest spinners in T20 history, along with Rashid Khan, Narine is also one of the most influential batsmen in T20 too. Since 2017, Narine has opened the batting, thriving by attacking with abandon and not overvaluing his wicket. Essentially, Narine is so effective because he bats like a bowler, and does not play himself in at the start of his innings. When he fails - which is often - he gets out so quickly that he doesn’t chew up dot balls. When he succeeds - like in the first game of this year’s Caribbean Premier League, razing 50 from 28 balls - Narine sets his team up to win the game. Add it to his match haul of 2-19 from four overs and you have a distillation of why many consider Narine the greatest T20 cricketer of the lot.
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