Not so long ago, Ian Bishop narrated the story behind his now famous line: “Remember the name”. Bishop said that he instinctively blurted out the line after Carlos Brathwaite smashed four sixes off Ben Stokes in the final of 2016 T20 World Cup because of what happened the previous day.
The former cricketer turned commentator attended an event with a group of businessmen. They were asking him about players to watch out for in the final, not including the obvious ones. He singled out Carlos Brathwaite.
“I have always said that, I didn’t want the moment. David Lloyd was on call lead. I did not want it. He handed it over to me and I was scared when he did that. All of a sudden, I was thrust into that position. It was just the emotion coming out. I sort of subconsciously remembered what I had said about Carlos the day before, when I told the businessman to look out for this fella, and I was kind of speaking to them, ‘remember the name’.”
The piece of commentary is as iconic as Brathwaite’s stellar show on 3 April, 2016.
Both England and West Indies had won the T20 World Cup before meeting in the 2016 final. Eoin Morgan’s side had lost their opening match of the tournament against West Indies thanks to Chris Gayle’s century. But they did well to win the rest of the matches and qualified for the final after beating New Zealand in the semi-final.
After securing victories in their first three matches, West Indies lost against Afghanistan. In the semi-final though, they broke Indian fans’ hearts by chasing down 193 at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium.
England were made to bat first and they ended up 155/9 in 20 overs. While the start was poor and England kept losing wickets, Joe Root’s 54 helped them to a decent total.
It was Root again who did the damage early on in the second innings. He bowled the second over and got rid of Johnson Charles and the mighty Gayle. It was a tricky target and England bowlers didn’t make it easy. Marlon Samuels, the 2012 WC final hero once again kept his team in the game but he was not getting much support from the other end.
West Indies were six down and needed 45 runs from the last four overs. The equation came down to 19 needed from six balls. Morgan handed the ball to Stokes and Brathwaite didn’t need to face all the six balls. He got the job done in four balls.
It was a poor over by Stokes and in the era of T20 cricket, against a power-hitter like Brathwaite, the England all-rounder was never getting away by bowling it in the slot. The first six was down the leg-side, the second one was over deep mid-wicket, the third one went over long-off and the last six soared in the stands behind deep mid-wicket again.
West Indies, who had entered the tournament after a bitter pay dispute with their cricket board, ensured they celebrated their remarkable victory to the fullest while taking jibes at their cricket board and those who doubted them.
“People were wondering if we would play this tournament, we had issues with the board, Mark Nicholas called us players with no brain. But all of us came together, these 15 men put adversity aside, play this type of cricket in front of such passionate fans. It was tremendous,” Darren Sammy, the two-time World T20 champion skipper said after the match.
Ben Stokes seemed to be broken after the beating he took against Brathwaite but a few years down the line, he became one of the best all-rounders to grace the game of cricket. England, too, did alright as they went on to become a destructive white-ball team and won the ODI World Cup in 2019.
To read more standout moments from past T20 World Cups, click here