Another spell-binding demonstration of clean, uncomplicated power hitting by Ricardo Powell saved the West Indies from complete humiliation but not from heavy defeat by India in the final of the DMC Cup here yesterday.
The latest manifestation of the 20-year-old Jamaican's astonishing ability came as a repudiation of his teammates' limp performance that reduced them to 52 for seven in the 18th over, in pursuit of a winning target of 226.
They had fallen meekly in the face of spirited, but hardly menacing, Indian bowling backed by keen catching and fielding, on another afternoon of sparkling sunshine.
When Powell marched purposefully to the middle, the indignity of their lowest total in a One-Day International 87 against Australia six years ago loomed ominously.
Unusually, he spent 11 scoreless balls carefully assessing the bowling and the situation.
When his captain, Brian Lara, and Merv Dillon fell off successive balls from off-spinner Nikhil Chopra, he decided it was time for action.
Over the next hour-and-a-quarter, he transformed the 2 000 or so spectators around the small, picturesque ground at the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club from a dissastisfied silence into a hubbub of excitement.
For their half-price entrance fee, they were seeing the same kind of rare talent that those had witnessed in Powell's match-winning 124 off 93 balls against the same Indians in the final of the Singapore Challenge a week ago.
Then, he lashed eight sixes and nine fours as he carried the West Indies to unlikely victory with sensible help from Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Nehemiah Perry.
Now all the main batsmen had collapsed and he had to depend on the support of Corey Collymore, an intelligent but unaccomplished No. 9.
But he refused to accept the reality that another victory was clearly out of the question.
While Collymore blocked capably for 28 balls, Powell thumped seven sixes and four fours. He scored 76 off the partnership of 84 off 15.3 overs.
Unfazed by neither the situation nor the bowling, he kept belting the ball out of the ground - seven times in all with a free, full swing of a straight bat. All were between long-off and longon.
Not every stroke was hit with the middle of the bat. Three times, miscued strokes fell between fielders but it was confirmation that fortune favours the brave.
No bowler escaped the bombardment although captain Saurav Ganguly kept rotating them.
Two sixes
When the six-foot, four-inch Venkatesh Prasad got his fingertips to one hit at long-on and pulled the ball back inside the boundary so it counted for nothing, Powell responded with two sixes in the same over that no one inside the perimeter could reach.
No hit was longer than that off medium-pacer Robin Singh's first ball that sailed over the trees beyond the sightscreen and into the back garden of the plush house adjoining the field.
No ball travelled quicker to the ropes than a rasping squaredrive off Prasad.
The effort was destined to be futile. Once he chipped a wellstruck ondrive off Chopra and Singh dived to his left to snare the catch inches from the ground, the innings lasted only eight more balls to return everyone to the grim reality of the defeat.
Powell's exhibition reduced everything that had gone before to irrelavance except that it was most relevant.
India struggled
Lara gained the early advantage by winning the toss. On a fresh, early morning pitch, India struggled to 61 for three but were then led to their challenging total by the classy Rahul Dravid, whose 77 off 83 balls, with two sixes off Jimmy Adams and six fours, and four slip catches in the West Indies innings, earned him Geoff Boycott's Man-Of-The-Match award.
He shared restorative partnerships of 59 with the newcomer, Jacob Martin, and 67 with the left-hander Vinod Kambli, as the West Indies once more suffered from the lack of an effective combination to share the fifth allotment of 10 overs and from the proliferation of 16 wides and 14 no-balls.
Dillon returned his best figures in One-Day Internationals, five for 51, but conceded 22 of his last two overs at the end. Adams and Powell, bowling medium-pace, were hit for 65 off their 10 shared overs.
Sherwin Campbell, the form batsman with half-centuries in the previous two matches, was bowled by the first ball of the innings, his inside-edged drive off Debasis Mohanty's full length outswinger diverted into the middle stump.
Things only got worse after that until Powell's arrival.
Lara continued with his obstinate insistence of going in at No.5, even below the 19-year-old newcomer Chris Gayle, and never looked as if he could revive the innings after the loss of Ridley Jacobs and Shivnarine Chanderpaul to neat slip catches by Dravid off Prasad.