New Zealand vs. West Indies: Winners and Losers from Cricket World Cup Match
Martin Guptill smashed the highest-ever Cricket World Cup score on Saturday, leading New Zealand to a 143-run victory over the West Indies in Wellington to secure a semi-final berth for the host nation.
Batting first, the home side thrashed their way to 393 for six at Westpac Stadium, with Guptill blasting an incredible and unbeaten 237 from only 163 deliveries to topple countless records.
In response, the West Indies fell a long way short but did go down swinging, reaching 250 in just 30 overs before being bowled out in the 31st. (You can catch our match report here.)
Across the following slides, we examine the winners and losers from Saturday's clash.
Winner: Martin Guptill
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When New Zealand walked out to bat in Wellington on Saturday, so much of the anticipation surrounded the team's captain, Brendon McCullum.
Indeed, the questions, both in the build-up and at the start of this game, all centred around the Kiwi skipper: Will he blast the West Indies everywhere? Will he set new records inside the small Wellington boundaries? Will he propel New Zealand into the semi-finals?
Instead, it was Martin Guptill who provided the answers, becoming the first New Zealander ever to score a one-day international double-century, while also breaking the record for the highest-ever World Cup score by reaching 237 not out.
It was an incredible innings from the right-hander, one that contained 24 fours and 11 sixes, and one that saw Guptill score his last 120 runs from just 43 deliveries.
Breathtaking.
Here, ESPN Cricinfo's Bishen Jeswant breaks down all the statistical achievements and records broken by the Kiwi batsman.
Loser: Marlon Samuels
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On Friday, it felt like we had witnessed what would be the most pivotal dropped catch of the World Cup when Rahat Ali put down a sitter from Shane Watson off the bowling of Wahab Riaz.
But 24 hours later, Ali's drop, in terms of what it cost his team, didn't even come close to Marlon Samuels' drop on Saturday against New Zealand.
From the third ball of the innings, Martin Guptill clipped a ball off his pads straight to Samuels at square-leg, only to see the West Indian put the chance down.
When the ball hit the turf, Guptill was on just four.
The drop cost Samuels and the West Indies a mind-blowing 233 runs.
Winner: Trent Boult
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Among the bowlers at this World Cup, left-arm seamers have absolutely dominated, with Mitchell Starc and Wahab Riaz showcasing that again in the previous quarter-final between Australia and Pakistan on Friday.
And on Saturday, New Zealand's Trent Boult reinforced that dominance of the left-armers, claiming four for 44 from his 10 overs to dismantle the West Indies' top order and secure an emphatic victory for the hosts.
Boult's figures were made more impressive by the expensive spells put together by his team-mates. At the other end, Tim Southee conceded 82 runs from eight overs, Adam Milne conceded 42 in four, Daniel Vettori let go 58 in just over six and Corey Anderson was smashed for 24 in two.
Like he's often been recently, Boult was the standout.
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Winner: The Crowd in Wellington
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Throughout this World Cup, crowds in New Zealand have donned orange shirt with targets on them, begging for balls to come their way in the stands.
In a tournament that has seen a glut of runs, they haven't been disappointed. But never has the crowd been as richly fed in this World Cup as it was on Saturday in Wellington.
Indeed, fans inside Westpac Stadium watched 31 sixes struck between the two sides—the most ever in a World Cup game and the second most in one-day international history.
It was quite a show.
Loser: West Indian Cricket
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After Saturday's massive defeat to New Zealand, it wouldn't be hard to break down the West Indies' performance and identify a large array of players who stand as losers from the destruction.
Indeed, it would be easy to individually highlight the bowlers who compiled awful spells with the ball. And it would be just as easy to highlight those who threw their wickets away with the bat.
But doing so would miss the point. Doing so would be to partly view Saturday's inept performance as an outlier, as a disappointment or something that's easy to recover from.
But it's not. Not at all. The display put forward by the West Indies has basically become the norm.
Of course, West Indian cricket is in a dark place at present for many reasons, but one of the major factors is a complete lack of standards—the team, as a whole, don't hold themselves to any.
In the field, they don't dive. They use boots to stop balls. They throw casually. They never operate in pairs. They don't get back to the stumps for run outs. They wander aimlessly between overs. The captain stands on the boundary. They don't walk in. They don't anticipate. They gift singles. They allow ones to become twos; twos to become threes.
It's the same with the bat. They dawdle between the wickets. They don't rotate the strike. They don't back up. They don't assess the situation. They don't plan an innings. They don't evaluate and avoid any risks.
As such, it doesn't matter that they're a team short on quality and depth to compete with the best—everyone knows that's the case already.
But by not holding themselves, collectively, to any standards whatsoever, they give themselves no chance. Absolutely none.
And that's dreadful for the game in the Caribbean.
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