04/09/2026
Greatest t20i inning ever? Lasith Malinga had never been hit for more than one six in a T20 innings by anybody. That night Marlon Samuels hit him for five. Malinga went for 54 off four overs, the worst figures of his entire T20 international career, and 39 of those runs came off eleven balls to one man. Only the real ones know how magnificent that innings was.
Look at where West Indies actually were. Fourteen for two after the powerplay, the fourth-worst score at that stage in the history of T20 internationals. Thirty-two for two after ten overs, the fifth-worst. Chris Gayle, of all people, had defended his way to 3 off 16. Samuels himself was 26 off 37. In a World Cup final, against the best bowling attack in the tournament, on a surface Cricinfo called among the tackiest and trickiest produced.
Then he hit the first six, and the press box glass at the Premadasa is thick enough to shut out a full house, and they felt it anyway.
He had planned it. Samuels said afterwards that he had already played Malinga in his mind the night before, so he decided to take him on. And in the 13th over Malinga went for five yorkers, nailed two, and missed the other three by a combined distance of about a foot. Samuels, sitting deep in his crease, hit two of them over the leg side and one over extra cover.
West Indies scored 105 in the last ten overs, which was more than Sri Lanka managed in their entire innings. Ajantha Mendis took 4 for 12 in that final and it counted for nothing. Eight sixes were hit in the whole match and Samuels hit six of them. He made 78 out of a team total of 137.
Cricinfo called it simply the best Twenty20 international innings ever seen, and a reader called it the 281 of T20 cricket, which is about right.
It is a shame T20 was not celebrated much back then. The occasion, the opposition, the circumstances, and a man who had decided the night before that he was going after the best death bowler alive.
What a spectacle it must have been.
