The West Indies men had a superb start to their innings with a wicket before England made any runs. Badree was on fire with both bowling and fielding and seemed to aggravate a shoulder injury towards the end of the innings after he made a lovely catch. Thankfully he had done all the work he needed to do already. England ended their innings on 155/9.
The pressure was then put on England. Even though their wickets fell quickly, pressure was still on the West Indies as well because the score of 155 was the second highest number of runs made in World T20 final history.
England responded well to the pressure and fought hard. They got 2 crucial early wickets, with Charles (1) and Gayle who just scored one boundary. Gayle has an issue timing the ball and needs to address it by being receptive to proper coaching for his shortfall.
Simmons went for a duck but Samuels was still there taking it easy with runs. There was a scare when he was called out for being caught by the wicket keeper but got called back as ‘not out’ when the umpires reviewed England’s wicket keeper scooping the ball off of the field into his glove claiming he caught it. Aussie tactics maybe? Thankfully justice was in our favour and Samuels had another chance to repeat or improve a possible game-winning performance as he did in 2012 when the Windies won their first T20 title.
England also dropped a crucial catch and missed running out Samuels as well, which definitely hurt them in the end.
Bravo stuck with Samuels for a little while and then he went. When Russell was caught for 1 and Captain Sammy came and went for 2, we knew this would end up being another nail biter for the West Indies and their fans. All of India who hosted the tournament were behind them as well, even though we booted them out in the semis.
Then we had the pair of Samuels and Brathwaite. It all came down to get 19 runs off of 6 balls!
What happened?! Strength, no weakness!
Watch “ICC T20 World Cup 2016 Final – Carlos Brathwaite Hit 4 Winning Sixes in Last Over” on YouTube here:
The West Indies won with the highest score in T20 history of 161/6.
Marlon Samuels was named Player of the Match with scoring 85* and was awarded with a Hublot watch. India’s Virat Kohli was named Player of the Tournament.
However, it was Samuels’s speech after he received his Player of the Match Award that was negative yet quite hilarious. At the end of answering his questions he made it a point to call out or send a message rather, to Australian Bowler, Shane Warne that he answers with his bat and not the mic.
On a more positive note, the West Indies now hold 3 titles this year with the Under 19 squad as World Cup Champions and the senior Men and Women teams as World T20 Champions.
With the Windies’ CPL T20 experience, their performance wasn’t perfect but they delivered.
Rally round the West Indies!
By: Gabrielle Williams (Daughter of Basil ‘Shotgun’ Williams)
