Joe Root redeems himself by holding on to a blinder, after dropping a lolly at Slips

The stage was set for the West Indian giants making a comeback into the ODI after an ugly tiff with the WICB. The non-cricketing issues were finally resolved and we could see our favourites, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Sunil Narine and many others, do what they do best in the longer format of the game.

All eyes were on comeback man Chris Gayle, who last played an ODI for West Indies back in World Cup of 2015. It took Gayle 913 days to finally take that guard in an ODIs. Perhaps, England skipper Joe Root might have been overwhelmed by the situation and a lapse in concentration from the captain gave a life to the ‘Universal Boss’.

Gayle was dropped in the very first over, as he tried to smack Willey out of the park the third ball he faced. The ball was at a comfortable height but somehow popped out of the hands of Root placed at slips.

After given a reprieve, Gayle finally was coming into his own as we saw some trademark hits from the Jamaican. The powerful southpaw was striking the ball at about 140 and had already hit three sixes and a couple of boundaries in his knock, adding salt to the wounds of the English skipper.

However, it did not take long for the English to see the back of Chris Gayle as Woakes bowled a ripper of an off-cutter to deceive the left-hander in the 9th over. Gayle was already into overdrive to dispatch the balls into the stand but only managed to lob the ball up in the air over extra cover.

The man at extra cover was none other than the Golden Boy of English Cricket, Joe Root, who redeemed himself by latching onto the skier while running back towards the vicinity of Extra-cover boundary. The skipper finally took a sigh of relief to see the back of Gayle after dropping a dolly first up.

Here’s the video