West Indies Skipper Darren Sammy gave the reporters a taste of his sense of humour when asked about Kohli’s form at the media conference on Wednesday at Mumbai. Sammy admitted that India have big advantage having a player of Kohli’s caliber in their squad. However, he also mentioned that West Indies don’t lag much behind India as they have world’s ‘best t20 player’ Chris Gayle in their squad.
“..Have you ever heard of Chris Gayle?” Sammy asked, adding further, “There’s no taking away from Virat, he’s a very good player, but like I’ve said in my press conferences, we tend to focus on what we could do in our dressing room. Like we’ve shown throughout the tournament once we execute our plans right we’ve won the games. When we’ve not, we’ve lost. So it’s going to be a hell of a game, it’s going to be 15 West Indies players versus 78,000 plus a billion Indians.
“Yes, it’s a challenge we’re ready to face, We all know that India is always difficult at home, but main focus in our dressing room is doing what we do best,” he added.
Sammy also admitted India are the clear favourites in Thursday’s semi-final clash with them and called it a David vs. Goliath contest. “I think it is 80-20 to India, so it feels like David vs. Goliath contest but people tend to forget David won the fight, so it’s something similar to that,” the West Indies Skipper said.
Talking about the areas that West Indies can improve in, he said: “We haven’t played the perfect game yet. We are stressing on rotation of strike. It is clear that we are a big boundary hitting team. We look at the dot-ball percentage, probably it is 40-50 per cent for us, and we could improve on that. So far, we have bowled really well in the tournament and on a few occasions, one batsman has taken responsibility,” he said.
Sammy also said that teams can learn a lot from India, especially when it comes to seizing momentum. “ It is about continuing that way and it is going to be a 240 ball event. It is all about momentum. And we are very aware India are a very good team at seizing momentum. Once we don’t let them win too many events in the 240(balls) and seize the momentum in that period of the match, we back ourselves to do that,” Sammy concluded
