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On This Day In 2019: The Caribbean duo smashed the hapless Irish attack in Dublin for their tremendous opening stand during a tri-series encounter.
Shai Hope and John Campbell surpassed Pakistan’s Imam-Ul-Haq and Fakhar Zaman. (Image: ICC/X, formerly Twitter)
On This Day in 2019: West Indies batters Shai Hope and John Campbell pulled off a jaw-dropping record in a One-Day International on this day six years ago. The Caribbean duo produced the highest opening stand in the history of 50-over internationals. Hope and Campbell made their career-best scores of 170 and 179, respectively, in a marathon first-wicket partnership of 365 runs during an ODI against Ireland on this day in May 2019.
The record was made in Dublin during the first ODI of the tri-series, also featuring Bangladesh. Hope and Campbell sent the hapless Irish fielders on a leather hunt in the first half, hammering an unparalleled 365 runs before being separated.
The duo not only made their highest individual scores in ODIs but also came just seven runs short of producing the biggest ODI partnership for any wicket. Hope and Campbell surpassed the previous highest opening partnership record in ODIs of 304 runs held by the Pakistani pair of Imam-Ul-Haq and Fakhar Zaman.
During their mammoth opening partnership, Hope and Campbell also became only the second pair of ODI openers to make individual scores of 150 after the former New Zealand top-order duo of Brendon McCullum and James Marshall.
The two players notably fell only 17 balls short of playing through the entire innings, which would’ve been a separate world record in One-Day International history.
While Campbell’s blistering 137-ball innings featured 15 fours and 6 sixes, Hope’s imperious knock spanning 152 balls included 22 fours and 2 maximums. Their knocks helped the West Indies post an insurmountable score of 381/3 and put enormous pressure on the struggling hosts.
In response, Ireland was bundled out for a paltry 185 inside 36 overs with West Indies spinner Ashley Nurse leading the wickets chart after his spell of 4/51. Experienced pacers Kemar Roach (2/28) and Shannon Gabriel (3/44) also contributed to the huge win.
But the stars of the show remained Hope and Campbell. The duo made it extremely difficult for the commentators to pick one of them to name the day’s ‘Player of the Match’ but the honour finally went to Campbell for carrying a strike-rate of 130.65 during his match-winning knock.
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