Guptill 237*, Black Caps*

Martin Guptill’s 237 is the highest score in the World Cup, surpassing 215 by Chris Gayle against Zimbabwe earlier in the tournament. Overall, it was the sixth double hundred in ODIs, four of which have been scored by Indian batsmen. (Source: Reuters)

‘What’s the name of the guy who opened with McCullum in the 2015 World Cup?’ could have been a trivia question in the decades to come. It won’t be now. Martin Guptill has binned that question for sure with his exhilarating double ton.

Can anything else than sport give people this wondrous communal buzz, this strange tingling mad rush just watching someone else do something as simple as hitting a ball? Big hitters tend to have a hint of bossiness about them like Gayle, McCullum, or nervous energy like AB de Villiers but Guptill doesn’t have a sense of presence about him. It’s not surprising as while Guptill can be regal on the front foot but he isn’t the big-hitter in the conventional sense. Hence, to see him tee off in the end overs and to watch the white ball fly everywhere was quite something. No wonder the 30,000 odd fans went absolutely delirious.

The chants were simple but are likely to form audible memories for those who were there. “Let’s go Martin, Let’s go’ followed by this thunderous clapping around the arena, or just his name as if he was Sachin Tendulkar. “Martin Guptill, Martin Guptill” It was utterly thrilling, a goose bump moment that would remain in the head for a while. “It was pretty cool, I never had anything like that before” was all the taciturn Guptill would say later.

Several fans had come in the inter-city trains in the morning; the stadium was adjacent to the railway station and a ramp up from platforms led to the arena, where stands rose steeply from the boundary line like a mini-cauldron. If you sit high enough, you could see the houses on the hill all around it, perched like tree houses on the pine trees. On the other side, the sea sparkled. As the night descended, the lights in the houses on the hill made them look like fireflies in the dark. Down below, it was West Indies who were being flattened and swatted away by this most unassuming cricketer.

The costliest drop

From the first ball that Guptill drove for a four that neither the captain Jason Holder or senior player Sulieman Benn chased, and especially, after the third ball when Marlon Samuels dropped a sharp but not too difficult a catch low to his left at square-leg when Guptill had flicked Jerome Taylor, West Indies seemed they were sleep walking. Even McCullum’s early fall, miscuing a big drive to mid-off, didn’t help them shake off the lethargy.

Those who have watched Guptill play will know that he loves the cut shots off spinners and drives imperiously off the front foot against the seamers. With the work done with his mentor Martin Crowe who focussed on his footwork and cut down the tendency to go square early on his innings, all his energy was trained towards his strong area of driving through the V.

By the end, he was simply cuing up his drives as if he was practising golf shots. ‘Sweet as’, went a lady volunteer in the balcony and it’s a good adjective to settle for this night. It wasn’t a violent night despite all those big hits — one even flew out of the ground but somehow Guptill never gave out that impression of fury. Perhaps, it has something to do with the inherent smoothness in his drives. Perhaps, it’s just an extension of his low-key personality that forms this stereotype of non-violence in our heads but there was this insanely cool control about his drives.

Under the kosh

“Who would have thought Guptill would be such a star,” a touring journalist bantered with a local journo. No laughter from the other end. Words shot out, crisp and stern: “He always was, mate”. That New Zealand journalist was right and wrong. For months leading to this World Cup, the New Zealand press, and bloggers, have been gunning for Guptill’s head. The fastest New Zealander to 3000 runs, ahead of Martin Crowe and Nathan Astle, the man who already has a 180+ score in an ODI (against England in 2013), the one with the 6th highest ODI average, third in the list of most hundreds for New Zealand was under the kosh. Not without some reason, though. The series against Sri Lanka, just before the World Cup, was a horror story with three ducks, and even late last year wasn’t too great. And hence the scrutiny.

On February 27th, Guptill had walked around with his wife Laura McGoldrik, a sports-television and a radio show host at the tree-ringed Cornwell Park in Auckland. They had met first when Laura came to interview Guptill for her show that eventually led to him proposing to her on a beach in Hawaii with a diamond ring specially designed by a Nelson jeweller Mike Walters. They had come to watch Martin Crowe bat for one last time. It was an emotional day for Guptill, especially after Crowe even said thanks to “Guppy” for coming. Crowe wasn’t there at the venue last evening but had texted good luck to Guptill and told him to keep plugging the gaps. Not only did he start off by threading the gaps but on the day he became the highest World-Cup scorer in history, and the first New Zealander with back-to-back hundreds in a World Cup, Guppy acquired an aura, at least for one unforgettable night.

Source:: Indian Express