Evin Lewis

Evin Lewis is an attacking left-handed opening batsmen and is one of the few players with two or more hundreds in Twenty20 Internationals. He made his debut in the 2016 World T20 game against Afghanistan in Nagpur, having been called in as a replacement for injured Lendl Simmons. He made his ODI debut later that year against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi.

Lewis smashed a 48-ball hundred against India in only his second T20I and went on to be the Man of the Match in Windies' narrow one-run win. His second T20I hundred was also against India, where he hit a scintillating 125* at Sabina Park.

Born in Trinidad, Lewis was a part of the Windies team that participated in the 2010 U19 World Cup in New Zealand. He went on to make his first-class debut for Trinidad and Tobago in March 2012 in the 2011–12 Regional Four-Day Competition. Lewis grabbed eyeballs as a young man at the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in India, where he scored 211 runs across 5 innings to finish as the tournament's fifth-highest run-scorer.

He has plied his trade for many T20 franchises ever since. In Caribbean Premier League, he was with T&T Red Steel in 2014 and then went to St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in 2015. In the Bangladesh Premier League, Lewis has represented Barisal Bulls and now represents Dhaka Dynamites. For Windies, Lewis is now a regular opener, who either fills in for Gayle in latter's absence or bats alongside his idol.

IPL through the years

A reputation for hitting big sixes in a format that worships power-striking, by the time the IPL 2018 auctions rolled around, Evin Lewis had the resume of a superstar. He had plied his trade successfully for many T20 franchises. He had smashed two T20I hundreds against India. And he was a destructive force at the top of the order for Windies, with or without Gayle. An IPL contract was never going to be too far, and so it proved when Mumbai Indians bagged him for INR 3.8 crores.

As expected, Lewis found his stride pretty quickly in the competition. After a duck in the very first game, the Trinidadian turned it around quickly to provide MI with quickfire starts in the next few games, the highlight being his maiden IPL fifty against RCB at the Chinnaswamy. Even a wrist injury in the middle of the tournament couldn't keep him off the boil for long. But despite Lewis's contributions, finishing as his team's third highest run-getter in the tournament, MI weren't able to make it into the play-offs.