‘We’ve Done It Before And I Think, We’re Really Excited About It’
After leading the West Indies to two Twenty20 World Cup titles as a captain, Daren Sammy has to defy history to win again as a head coach.
No host has won the tournament on home soil in the first eight editions, a trend Sammy hopes to break with the 2024 T20 World Cup being staged in the United States of America and the Caribbean.
Sri Lanka went the closest by reaching the final in 2012 before losing to West Indies in Colombo. That win is widely remembered for the Gangnam Style celebrations of the Caribbean players after Sri Lanka was bowled out for 101 in pursuit of a 138-run target.
Four years later, a fearless brand of West Indies cricket set the Eden Gardens alight in India. Carlos Brathwaite hit four consecutive sixes against Ben Stokes in the final over to steer the Caribbean team to a second T20 World Cup title.
Sammy was appointed head coach of the West Indies limited-overs squads last year. His past teammates Johnson Charles and Andre Russell, T20’s most accomplished all-rounder, are the only two-time champions still in the squad.
“We know how to select winning teams,” Sammy said in a news conference with Caribbean media to announce the squad. “We’ve done it before and I think, as a selection group, we’re really excited about it.” “It’s an exciting time, and this preparation did not start now. It started from the last World Cup in Australia,” Sammy said.
“What we’ve been able to do throughout the last year as a T20 group, the players we’ve exposed, has brought us to this moment, and I think we’re about to knock it out of this world.’” Curtley Ambrose, the great West Indies pace bowler, was confident the squad could play the consistent, smart cricket required to win a third title.
West Indies and England are the only teams to have won the title twice, and no host has ever won, he said, “so all that is motivation for the guys to do well.” The last two T20 World Cups in the United Arab Emirates in 2021 and Australia in 2022 didn’t go well for West Indies. Kieron Pollard’s team was eliminated in the group stage in the UAE with just a win.
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