World Cup 2019: Top four knocks of the tournament

#2 Carlos Brathwaite's breathtaking century vs New Zealand

Carlos Brathwaite after his century.

While teams like India, Australia, England ploughed through teams like well-oiled machines in their quest for World Cup glory, there are teams like the West Indies who add some flavor to the tournament with their nonchalant free-flowing eye-catching style of cricket.

West Indies are by far the most inconsistent team when it comes to performance on the field, during one phase of the game they may look like an unstoppable force but can fold like a deck of cards in a matter of minutes in another. The very same thing happened in their group stage match vs New Zealand.

Facing a mammoth total of 291, West Indies were on course for the target at the start of the 23rd over with the score at 142/2 but like always they threw caution to the wind and lost two wickets in consecutive balls, the situation now turned from advantageous to peculiar.

Fall of the 4th wicket saw Carlos Brathwaite join Chris Gayle on the pitch and he started his innings with a boundary albeit, through an outside edge, he followed it up by creaming two balls to the cover boundary in the 25th over.

While Brathwaite tried to steady the innings from one end the other end was least complying as the West Indies lost three wickets between the 24th and 27th overs. With just the tailenders for company, Brathwaite curbed his natural game and for the next 4 overs only took singles that were on offer.

He finally broke the shackles in the 32nd over by smashing Santner over the long-on boundary for a maximum. 2 overs later, he managed a couple of hits to the boundary off Colin De Grandhomme.

While Brathwaite tried his hardest, boundaries were still few and far in between and by the end of the 45th over, West Indies were in need of another 47 runs with just one wicket in hand. Brathwaite had a job on his hands and he had to do something that wouldn't have crossed his mind even during his wildest dreams, to produce an innings that surpassed the one from the 2016 T20 World Cup final.

He started off strong by hitting Trent Boult for a boundary in the 45th over and then followed it up with a maximum off Ferguson in the 46th. The equation after 47 overs stood at 33 required off the last 3 overs.

Matt Henry induced a top-edge off Brathwaite on the first ball of the 48th over for a double but what followed after that is something that will forever be etched into World Cup folklore. In the next four balls, Brathwaite smashed Henry for three consecutive sixes and a four as he brought the equation down to eight off 12.

The following over, Brathwaite took a double on the 4th ball to bring up a much deserved century and also brought down the equation to six off eight balls. On the final ball of the over, he heaved the ball onto the long-on boundary in an attempt to finish the match but, alas, with dejected eyes he had to see the white leather nestle into the hands of Trent Boult stationed just meters before the boundary.