Martin Guptill hits highest World Cup score in New Zealand victory

NEW ZEALAND, March 21: New Zealand’s Martin Guptill smashed the highest score in World Cup history with 237 not out against West Indies to send his team into the semi-finals.

The 28-year-old’s 163-ball innings featured 11 sixes and 24 fours and beat the 215 made by West Indies’ Chris Gayle earlier in the tournament.

Guptill hit 137 from his last 52 balls to help his side post 393-6.

Trent Boult then took four early wickets as New Zealand bowled out the Windies for 250 to seal a 143-run win.

Gayle’s 33-ball 61, featuring eight sixes, entertained the crowd as the Caribbean side scored at a furious pace.

But they continued to lose wickets at regular intervals and were bowled out in 30.3 overs to spark jubilant scenes in Wellington.

New Zealand will now face South Africa in Auckland on Tuesday for a place in the World Cup final.

Glorious Guptill

Guptill’s score was the second best in ODI history behind Rohit Sharma’s 264 and propelled his team to the highest total in a World Cup knockout match.

Having ended a run of 21 innings without a century in New Zealand’s previous match against Bangladesh, he became the fifth player to make an ODI double hundred.

He joined Indians Sharma, Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag, and Gayle in the exclusive club.

His effort was also the fourth highest score in all List A cricket – limited-overs games that are not Twenty20s.

Cake Tin Roof

Opener Guptill, who was dropped on four by Marlon Samuels, already held the record for the best ODI score by a New Zealander, having made an unbeaten 189 against England in 2013.

But this effort, played out in front of a raucous Wellington crowd in a home quarter-final, ensured his place in World Cup and New Zealand cricket history.

The right-hander, who began by driving the first ball of the innings for four, heaved six after six over the leg side boundary after reaching his century.

The 10th of his sixes went out of the ground and landed on the roof of the “Cake Tin” stadium.

He shared a partnerships of 143 with Ross Taylor, whose patient 42 was the second highest score in the Kiwi innings.

Guptill, who made his second hundred from only 41 balls, beat the previous best World Cup knockout score of 149 made by Australia’s Adam Gilchrist.

He became the first New Zealander to score hundreds in consecutive World Cup innings and the first of his countrymen to bat through the full 50 overs three times in ODIs.

Gayle became the first man to make a World Cup double hundred against Zimbabwe in Canberra on 24 February.

But his record lasted only 25 days, with Gayle congratulating Guptill on the field when the New Zealander surpassed his score.

What he said

“It’s a pretty cool feeling to be fair. Obviously there is pressure when you walk in to bat but you’ve just got to try to put it out of your mind and watch the ball as well as you can.

“That’s what I tried to do today, I’m just lucky it paid off.”

BBC