Cuttack catastrophe cries for Windies to look beyond Evin 'big-hitter' Lewis
Getty
For years, Evin Lewis the ODI batsman has been associated with âthatâ knock he played against England. He is, by no means, a âone innings wonderâ, but the truth is that his performances in the format have been underwhelming and unimpressive; not worthy enough of a place in the team.
Reputation is a funny thing - it is a tool capable of either putting you on a pedestal or burying you deep beneath the ground. But what it makes sure is that once you have a label next to you, you cannot jettison the sticker, for it will stay glued to you till the end of time. Some, who unfortunately find themselves on the wrong side of it, are abandoned, discarded and deserted irrespective of what they do whilst the others, the lucky ones, are glorified and venerated; safeguarded from everything that comes their way. Evin Lewis belongs to the latter category.
He isnât the one to blame, of course. When youâre a 25-year-old - who has just played 20-odd matches - with an ODI high score of 176* and two T20I tons against arguably the best limited-overs team of the decade, things are bound to blow up. There are no comments to be made about Evin Lewis the T20 batsman: he is compact, world-class and a treasure for every team he plays. The same cannot, however, be said about Lewis the ODI batsman, who has farmed a place in the team due to reputation.
Lewisâ knock today at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack was more or less his ODI career in a nutshell - for the most part fruitless, ineffective and unproductive for the team with a rare boundary or two unsuccessfully compensating for the underwhelming performances. On a wicket where no batsman had a strike rate south of 79, Lewis batted with a strike rate of 42; his 51-ball 20 was the difference between a 315 and a 350 score and unfortunately for his team, they had to settle with the former. Hereâs where his âreputationâ plays the trick. Words like âone-offâ and âuncharactersticâ are thrown and people give him the pass as after all, he is an explosive batsman capable of doing damage who just had a bad day at the office. But now, itâs time for the Windies to look beyond his reputation and drop Lewis from the ODI squad, for itâs not a âone-offâ anymore; itâs a trend.Â
Lewis is someone who is associated with big-hitting, and big-hitters generally tend to possess a healthy strike, donât they? But Lewisâ ODI career strike rate of 82.27, and his strike rate since the start of 2018 of 77.62, says otherwise. In his last 18 ODI innings, Lewis has struck at a rate lower than 85 on 13 occasions. Now this isnât alarming by any means, but when you bring in the Shai Hope factor, it spells disaster for the team and there are two reasons for the same: a) The first powerplay becomes all but useless and b) You force Hope, your best batsman, to go against his natural game of anchoring and instead go for the big hits. The second of the aforementioned points, of course, is what transpired in Cuttack today: The Windies were 57/1 at the end of the 15th over and in an attempt to make a move on, Shai Hope perished.Â
But the problem with Lewis doesnât end there. His tendency to farm the strike, or rather his inability to rotate the strike, means that from his end, itâs either feast or famine. And as the numbers suggest, more often than not, itâs more of the latter and less of the former. Of course, the lofty straight-drives with the posture held and the monstrous mid-wicket hits boasted by the long leavers will always be there, as witnessed by his greeting to Navdeep Saini earlier today, but are they the need of the hour? Perhaps not.Â
Unlike an India who have a Rohit Sharma who can start off slow and yet make up for it towards the latter stages of the innings, Lewis doesnât guarantee the Windies the same; his career record of 2 ODI hundreds in 45 innings serves as a testament to it. With Hope serving as the anchor and with Hetmyer, Pooran and Pollard waiting in the sheds to smash the leather off the ball, the West Indies are in dire need of an opener who can give them a brisk start; someone who can exploit the powerplay and take the opposition on from the word go and of course, someone who is brisk and proactive between the wickets. Â
Cuttack was not just a warning, but a loud cry, a clear sign for the selectors to finally let go of their obsession with âreputationâ and look beyond the same. For Lewis, itâs time to go back to the drawing board and device a plan to succeed in this format, for, as of this moment, he looks like a chicken stuck right in the middle of the road not knowing what to do. What he brings to the table is, of course, unique, but at this point in time, Evin Lewis is a luxury that the Windies cannot afford.Â
