Soliloquy

Darren Julius Garvey Sammy walks down the steps leading from the away dressing room of the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad into the insane May heat. He’s just finished having a chat with fellow West Indian Dwayne Bravo. The latter’s playing for the Lions in the IPL while Sammy’s away commentating. It’s 7 pm but the heat is unbearable. Well, not as much as Saint Lucia in the peak of summer.

The Sunrisers Hyderabad defeat the Gujarat Lions in a one-sided affair and Sammy does all the talking in the commentary box. That’s what he’s here for- say as much as he does that he misses his old franchise, there have been no takers for Sammy in this year’s IPL auction. He talks about begging Tom Moody, his old coach at the Eagles’ dressing room to let him inside once again and though it may appear to the billion viewers on TV that he was joking, a part of him wants to get involved. Very badly, too.

Yes, very badly, given that he’s just led the West Indies to their second World T20 triumph in three times. But his is just the side story. The whole world is crooning for Carlos Brathwaite, who takes Ben Stokes apart for four sixes in an eventful final over of the tournament and heads the game home for the West Indies. Sammy takes the trophy from ICC President Zaheer Abbas and bellows his teammates to join him on the podium and start the celebrations. They do so and the champagne is flying across with emotions and fire in the Babylon!

The World T20’s history now and so is the IPL. His former team, the Sunrisers have taken the trophy home. Sammy has packed his bags and left for a well-deserved rest after three gruelling months in the subcontinent, first as captain and player, later as commentator.

The triumph of the World T20 is a different story altogether. There were stories doing round of the West Indies Cricket Board having paycheck issues with the senior team and major fall-outs among minor players. Everyone in the world had written the team off. Competing, yes but winning the World T20, you are joking, aren’t you?

It wasn’t the situation Sammy and Co. were looking to depart from home with but they had to and their perseverance to go on and lift the trophy speaks volumes about their character.

The West Indies had luck going their way, especially in a crucial semifinal against India where Lendl Simmons got out twice to no-balls and later went to play a match-winning knock, but everyone who’s played cricket will know that fortune plays a fair share in the sport and more or less, favours the brave. The West Indies were brave and brash, laidback and low, right and righteous and courageous and courteous. Led by an inspirational Sammy, the English did not stand a chance in the final and the last-over heroics by Brathwaite signified their new-found confidence more than anything else.

Darren Sammy remembers this with a smile and talks about Chris Gayles’s dressing room antics with a keen fellow passenger on the airplane. When asked about the IPL which started in a week of the last ball of the World T20 being bowled, he looks up to the imaginary skies and says that it wasn’t meant to be- he just wasn’t up for the pressures of the world’s biggest T20 league anymore. He’d always been someone who’d played cricket for his mates, for the quiet beer after a hard game and the shared camaraderie between opponents.

In a month or so, the World T20 will be forgotten but Darren Sammy will never forget what that did to him and his bunch of no-hopers.

It may not have been the One-Day World Cup, or a glorious day in Test cricket, or a swashbuckling double hundred, or a demolishing five-wicket haul. But maybe, just maybe, for one day- on the night of the World T20 final, 3 April 2016, Darren Sammy was on top of Andre Russell and the West Indies were on top of the world.