Former West Indies skipper Darren Sammy has revealed an interesting story behind their epic win in the T20 World Cup final in 2016 at Eden Gardens, Kolkata. The Windies snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to win their record second T20 World Cup.
Sammy has articulated that England all-rounder Ben Stokes‘ comment had unknowingly motivated Marlon Samuels during the final. Sammy said all this while interacting with Sky Sports’ cricket watch alongside English Test skipper Joe Root.
“Marlon told us something, and maybe Root could confirm that when Marlon came in at 11-3. He came to bowl, and he said something like ‘you guys, I would like to see you come out of this one’ and Marlon was just taking his time, making sure that comment, whatever he (Ben Stokes) said to him as he walked in, that got him really focussed,” said Sammy.
After listening to Sammy, Root, who was the vice-captain of that English squad, also dropped his part of the story. Root went on to claim that Samuels might have invented the story.
“It would have been a good effort because Ben was at long-on, so I don’t know how that happened. He might have just made it up,” said Root.
However, Sammy didn’t buy Root’s statement saying that Samuels had said something to Stokes after the end of the game.
“When he (Stokes) was bowling to him, he said something to Marlon during that time. Because Marlon told us about it, he was really pumped. If you notice, in the back end, Marlon said something to him after that. But it’s all cricket man,” Sammy added.
The two time World Cup-winning captain has been in the headlines from the past few days. Recently, Sammy had alleged that he and Sri Lanka all-rounder Thisara Perera were subjected to racist slurs during their stint with Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH).
However, Sammy’s former SRH teammates Irfan Pathan, Parthiv Patel and Venugopal Rao have denied backing the allegations stating if certain things had happened, it would have been noticed.
“I was there with him (Sammy) in 2014. I feel had this really happened; the matter would definitely have been discussed. So I’m not aware of such things as nothing was discussed in a larger way,” Pathan had said.
