‘Dialling in on clear plans’ key to massive Hope-Greaves stand

“We were trying to be as detailed as possible,” said Shai Hope of his 242-run stand with Justin Greaves at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua against Sri Lanka, a partnership that could yet salvage a rare WTC 2025-27 series win for West Indies.

"[We had] a good idea of what the Sri Lankan bowlers were trying to do to get us out," said Hope, who scored 112 off 243 balls, his fifth Test century, after the fourth day’s play.“The field usually dictates at some points of the game what they're trying to do,” he said. So the key was just to stay in the moment, trying to understand the scoring options and then obviously trying to take the wicket-taking option out of play.

"So it's just about communicating that: anything off the surface, anything off the bowler's hands, anything swinging, anything moving, just keep communicating. Something we do really well in the middle to be honest. He’s the type of guy that takes the information and applies it to his batting so it’s something we feed off each other quite nicely. "And that was a big thing out there, just having us clear plans going into each over and just dialling in on it.

Greaves continued a happy habit of converting his fifties into hundreds, and hundreds into big hundreds, when he scored 180 in 325 balls, his third century in only his 16th Test. Greaves has just one half-century to add to his three centuries, which have been scores of 115 not out (also in North Sound), 202 not out (in Christchurch) and now 180.

Very good knock. He has proved that he can score runs in all conditions against all bowling line-ups. “He’s a class player,” Hope said of his partner. “I like watching him go about his work, his preparation, and then it just translates into on-the-field stuff. So happy for him. "I hope he continues in that vein and there's a lot more runs for him to come," said the wicketkeeper.

Hope said the trick was to "stay in the zone" of his own innings and "understanding what the team required in that particular moment".

"We saw what happened in the first innings from the Sri Lankan point of view, their batsmen stood up. It's not a surface you can just blast the team out on. “So it was very important for myself to adjust to give them a little bit more of a hard time out there batting,” Hope said. "So, yeah, just happy to get those runs under my belt and obviously, by extension, trying to get us in a strong position to, hopefully, it would have been to demand victory. "But now it's about giving ourselves as much time out to the game as we possibly could in that stage of the game."

Sri Lanka are 142 runs ahead with eight second innings wickets in hand at the end of the fourth day. They batted first and declared on 549 for 9, before holding West Indies to 499. Dinesh Chandimal and Kamindu Mendis then put on an unbroken 60 runs to further their cause. Chandimal and Kamindu have scored at a run rate of 5.07 so far and Sri Lanka would hope for more of the same to give themselves the chance of declaring early on the last day and giving their bowlers a shot at securing victory.

“Yeah, it’s a sticky one to be fair, because a few quick wickets that we can get, then we can probably demand or have an upper hand in the game,” Hope said. "But it could go the other way, too. They can come out and score pretty fast and then put a little pressure on us.

So I think both sides, both teams, will play a big part, especially in that first hour, maybe first two hours of the day tomorrow. And then I think you'll be able to have a better understanding of how the game is going to play. But you know how it is in the game of cricket. “You never know what’s going to happen until the last ball is bowled.