He’s a superhero out of an animator’s fever dream. Is it too soon to say he’s perhaps the greatest T20 player of all time?
Osman Samiuddin23-Jun-2024It is entirely plausible, depending on how you consume your cricket (let’s say, intermittently, in longer form and international), that the career of Andre Russell has played itself out near the periphery of your consumption. Occasionally, no doubt, he’s burst through, when winning World Cups for example, or dominating IPLs, or pulling off feats of cricket so unimaginable you suspect they’re AI-generated.Equally as likely, you’ve seen him referenced in some lament about the decline of West Indian cricket, as he turns down a central contract and chooses $$ over duty for country. Viv and company would never have done that (though, two words: Packer, Kerry). Or you can vaguely recall a doping ban from a few years ago, probably also as a lament about the lack of integrity in what used to be a gentleman’s sport.If that is the case, then while he has your attention at this World Cup, consider the proposition that Russell is among the greatest cricketers to have played the game. If that is too much to swallow and you feel putting him in the same cross-format list as, say, Jacques Kallis, is sacrilege, then sure, add the caveat of his format. With that qualification, there’s even less competition: he isn’t simply among the greatest T20 cricketers to have lived, he’s one of the greatest two, alongside Kieron Pollard.Related
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No? If West Indies win this T20 World Cup, Russell will have won more world titles than Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge, Alvin Kallicharran and Andy Roberts. He already has more than Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Desmond Haynes. If you say, so has Johnson Charles, well, yes, touché. Well played. Except, if Russell wins this tournament, it will be his 14th T20 title (league titles in seven different countries), a winningness that puts him out on his own with Pollard (18 titles) and Dwayne Bravo (17).It’s slightly urgent to drive all this home because he’s 36 and these might be the last few days we see Russell in a world event representing the West Indies. Maybe. Last December, when he returned to the West Indies side after two years, he said he’d told the coach, Daren Sammy, he’d walk away from international cricket after the World Cup. Except if they needed him after it. In which case, he’d come out of retirement.That, of course, is one of the marks of the T20 age, that nobody really retires anymore. Chris Gayle still hasn’t called it quits officially. One player’s goodbye is another’s franchise hello. Given that less than a sixth of Russell’s T20 matches have been played for West Indies, and that he’s played one and a half times as many games for Kolkata Knight Riders as he has for West Indies, leaving KKR might be the more significant exit.Some part of Russell’s greatness is in this late bloom, in which he is 36 but performing as if he’s a decade younger. He’s five years on from looking like he was done during the 2019 World Cup when his knee had given way; from major knee surgery; nearly three years on from what was supposed to be the end of his era; a year on from the 2023 IPL, where he had a senior moment, sacrificing his wicket off the penultimate ball by getting run-out so he could get the new finisher, Rinku Singh, on strike; and old enough now to have proteges.Thirty-six, in his 15th year as a T20 cricketer and having, by some measures, his best year yet. He has never averaged more with the bat in a year (43.4) or had a higher strike rate (brace yourselves: 203.2, across 28 innings). It is the highest strike rate for any batter this year with 500-plus runs (no batter has had more such years).