BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AFP) — Marlon Samuels’s first-ever hundred against Australia and a record-breaking partnership with Denesh Ramdin lifted the West Indies to a competitive 282 for eight batting first in the eighth match of the Tri-Nation One-Day International Series at Kensington Oval in Barbados on Tuesday.

Dismissed off the last ball of the innings for 125, an innings highlighted by 14 fours and two sixes off 134 deliveries, Samuels’s masterful innings followed a match-winning 92 in the last meeting between the two teams in St Kitts a week earlier.

Amazingly, they were his first two scores over 50 in ODI cricket against the Australians for more than 14 years.

Ramdin, who matched his senior partner shot-for-shot in an entertaining innings of 91, joined Samuels at the crease with the West Indies faltering at 31 for three in the ninth over after Steve Smith had won the toss and chose to field in a match the World Cup-holders must win to advance to Sunday’s final at the same venue.

They put on 192 for the fourth wicket, a new record for the West Indies againstAustralia as it surpassed the mark of 149 set by Clive Lloyd and Rohan Kanhai in the inaugural World Cup final at Lord’s exactly 41 years earlier.

During the course of his innings, Samuels went past the landmark of 5,000 ODI runs while Ramdin became the first West Indies wicketkeeper to reach the plateau of 2,000 runs in this format of the game before Mitchell Starc broke the partnership by bowling Ramdin as he missed an attempt at a leg-side heave.

Two of the three sixes in his 92-ball innings were consecutive straight hits off Starc, the left-arm fast bowler finishing with figures of three for 51.

He should have also claimed the wicket of Samuels but wicketkeeper Matthew Wade failed to hold onto the chance offered when the Jamaican batsman was on 65.

James Faulkner and Scott Boland took two wickets each, however Australiastruggled in the absence of a specialist slow bowler with Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell combining for five comparatively economical overs.

That reliance on pace had appeared justified at the start of the West Indies innings, though, when Starc dispatched openers Johnson Charles and Andre Fletcher while Josh Hazlewood accounted for Darren Bravo via a diving slip catch by Smith within the first nine overs.