Windies need to drop Shai Hope - and there’s no two ways about it

1057 days have passed since Shai Hope scored the second of his two tons at Headingley, which propelled Windies to a famous and borderline-improbable win over England. Since then, Hope has played 21 Test matches and batted 38 times and no less than 38 of those knocks have had a commentator at least make a passing mention of his heroics in Headingley. 

By now, he’d even convinced me that finally, finally, he was going to get that one standout performance that has eluded him for over a thousand days. But it wasn’t to be. After looking as assured as a peak Rahul Dravid and as confident about his decision making and shot-selection as Brian Lara for 70 balls, he perished on the 71st ball in the most careless and baffling fashion imaginable: Hope nicked the ball to the keeper after throwing his hands at a Sam Curran off-cutter. 

For Shai Hope’s ‘talent’ has been hurting the Windies Test side for far too long now. It should no longer be a question of giving him one more chance or one more series. His stay in the Windies side should end and it should end now. For 18 Tests, since after the 90* and two 40-plus scores he registered against Zimbabwe in 2017 on the back of his Headingley twin-tons, Hope has been freeloading in the side at the cost of players who could have done so much more had they been given 30% of the rope the selectors have given to the right-hander. 

It has, right now, come to the point where there simply and absolutely can be no justification for Hope to get picked in the side again. The selectors and Holder must look at their own faces in the mirror and ask themselves if they have been any doing justice to the hundreds of hardworking players in the domestic circuit and to their own supporters by constantly picking Hope in the side, on the basis of a knock that he played over 1000 days ago - and has since failed to replicate.

Matches are being lost, careers are being ruined and opportunities are being deprived because of blind faith in one batsman who simply cannot seem to score runs to save his life. And that’s the bottom line here - you can yet excuse inconsistency, but with Hope, the issue is not inconsistency. Rather, it is consistency in being hopeless and dreadful and this has dragged on for way too long.

In his last 22 Test knocks, Hope has reached the 30-run mark just twice and 36% of his scores in this timeframe have been single-digit scores. The numbers game can go on and on and more such statistics can be produced to shed light on his unjustifiable run in the side, but it will serve no purpose unless and until Jason Holder and the Windies selectors, who seem to be pretending like Hope has been in the middle of a monstrous run in Test cricket, self-introspect, open their eyes and take a bold call. That a potential axing of Hope is being talked up as ‘bold’, in itself, is a shame. 

What Hope needs now is a break - a break from Test cricket, a break from the unwarranted media attention and a break from the crippling feeling of letting his team down every time he walks out to bat. A full year away from Test cricket, batting in the Regional four-day competition, for all we know, could do him a world of good. If Jermaine Blackwood can go back to domestic cricket, top-score and tear-apart the division, come back and play a match-winning fourth innings knock in a Test match, then so can Hope; we know he’s got the talent, we have seen him do it before. What he and his team need to realize, though, is that his talent has proved counterproductive to both himself and his team for way too long and it cannot be allowed to continue any longer. 

Perhaps he’ll turn it around someday, perhaps he’ll score a ton and finally fulfill his prophecy, and when he does so, I’ll be the first person to rise up and applaud. But I’ve been deceived for way too long now and for once, I would love to watch a Windies Test match without the mention of Leeds 2017.