All-round Roston Chase looks to make mark

A dependable middle-order batsman and a tidy off-spinner, Roston Chase's push for a place in West Indies' Twenty/20 setup came during the 2021 Caribbean Premier League (CPL) season when he finished as the tournament's MVP and helped his St Lucia Kings franchise to their second straight final.

In the 2021 CPL season, Chase cracked a tournament-high 446 runs with four fifties at an average of 49.55, to go along with ten wickets. Known for his steadying and patient innings in the middle and lower order for the Windies Test team, Chase's stellar campaign earned him a spot for the 2021 International Cricket Council (ICC) T20 World Cup in Oman and the UAE.

With the West Indies' 2021 World Cup squad littered with big hitters such as Chris Gayle, Evin Lewis, Nicholas Pooran, Andre Russell and then-captain Kieron Pollard, Chase said he was ready to step into the big shoes of Jamaican middle-order batsman Marlon Samuels. In the 2012 and 2016 T20 World Cup finals, Samuels played fantastic match-winning knocks to anchor the Windies to their two titles.

At the 2021 T20 World Cup, though, Chase and the Caribbean team's plans were foiled as the defending champions crashed out at the Super 12s stage after suffering four losses in their five group matches.

Chase made his Windies T20 debut in the team's third game of the tournament – a nail-biting three-run victory over Bangladesh. Chase made 39 off 46 balls as the Windies made 142 for seven before restricting the Bangladeshis to 139. In the next two matches, Chase made just nine runs to finish the tournament with an average of 16.

With just 13 T20 matches to his name, Chase has had a stop-start career with the West Indies in the shortest format since debuting in 2021.

The 32-year-old right-hander featured in the 3-0 series loss away to India in February 2022. He made just 16 runs in two innings, but his best work came with the ball as he took six wickets in the series. In the second match, Chase grabbed figures of three for 25 – his best T20 international return – and accounted for the big scalps of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav.

Chase was not included in the regional team for the 2022 T20 World Cup qualifiers, and his next appearance in maroon came during the team's 2-1 series win away to South Africa in March 2023.

The allrounder's best showing arguably came against South Africa in a 3-0 T20 series win just before the June 1-29 World Cup. In the second match of the series, Chase notched his maiden fifty as he put on a Man-of-the-Match performance with an unbeaten 67 off just 38 balls.

With five centuries and four five-wicket hauls to his name in 49 Test matches, Chase will be hoping to bring his all-round qualities to the T20 setup and silence his naysayers in the process.