The second match of the five-match One-Day International series between West Indies and New Zealand delivered a dramatic turnaround at Guyana’s Providence Stadium on Monday, as a devastating bowling performance from the Black Caps flipped the series on its head after the home side’s opening-game win.
Put into bat first after losing the coin toss, West Indies got off to a promising start, cruising to 66 runs without losing a wicket inside the first 11 overs. What followed was a shocking batting collapse that saw the Caribbean side lose all 10 wickets for just 72 additional runs, being bowled out entirely in the 36th over for a meager total of 138. The destruction was led by left-arm spinner Jayden Lennox, who turned in a match-winning performance to claim five wickets for just 19 runs, earning him Player of the Match honors.
Only two West Indies batters managed to post scores above 20: opener John Campbell led the scoring with a quick 43 off 41 deliveries, while wicketkeeper Amir Jangoo chipped in with 24. Ackeem Auguste and Keacy Carty added 18 runs each to the total, but wickets fell at consistent intervals throughout the innings, breaking any chance of a competitive total. For New Zealand, Mitchell Santner supported Lennox with 2 wickets for 21 runs, and Michael Bracewell claimed a further 2 wickets for 51 runs to round out the Black Caps’ bowling effort.
Chasing the low 139-run target, New Zealand stumbled early, losing two wickets in three consecutive deliveries when the score sat at 35. West Indies spinner Khary Pierre picked up two of the early wickets, finishing with 2 for 33, but could not break the Black Caps’ middle-order stand. Tom Latham anchored the successful chase with an unbeaten 37 runs off 61 balls, and Bracewell finished the job not out on 24 from 26 deliveries. New Zealand crossed the winning line in the 33rd over at 141 for 5, securing a comfortable five-wicket victory.
The result levels the five-match series at 1 win apiece, after West Indies claimed a seven-wicket win in the opening ODI on Saturday. The third match is scheduled to take place this Thursday, giving both sides just two days to reset ahead of the next clash.
After the match, West Indies captain Shai Hope acknowledged that his side’s batting performance fell well short of the standard required to win. “If we’d put 60-70 more runs it would have been a different game,” Hope told reporters. “Conditions in the Caribbean usually favour the teams batting second, and I’m not someone who wins the toss too often, so batting first is something we need to get a little better at. We need to adapt for the next game and find a way of setting a competitive target.”
Pierre echoed his captain’s assessment, agreeing that the batting unit left too many runs out on the pitch, but praised his fellow bowlers for keeping the game competitive despite the small total. “We left some runs out there for sure after we got bowled out in 36 overs. I think we could have batted a little more responsibly, rotated the strike a bit more and try to get to 230 – I think that’s a winning score on this track,” Pierre said. “I think it was a really good job by the bowlers defending 138; at no point did we think that we couldn’t have won the game. Coming down to the end it was a bit easy after we didn’t pick up the late wickets, but I think the bowlers fought well.”
Pierre also noted that Monday’s playing surface was slower than the wicket prepared for the opening match, and expressed confidence that the side can bounce back quickly in the third fixture. “I think all the batsmen know what they are capable of and what they need to do. We’re just gonna do some homework on rotation of strike and stuff like that, go to the nets and have a knock,” he said. “All the guys are confident. We know what’s at stake here. You win some and you lose some, but we need to bounce back, and the next game is a quick turnover.”