PAUL Collingwood praised his England side’s fighting spirit after they were eliminated from the World Twenty20 by a weather-affected match against West Indies.
Two showers at the Oval reduced West Indies’ target to 80 from nine overs after fellow semi-final hopefuls England posted 161 for six.
Containing their big-hitting opponents was always going to be a challenging task for the hosts, whose mood had lifted 24 hours earlier by accounting for India at Lord’s.
England claimed five wickets inside half a dozen overs of the chase, however, before experienced duo Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan dashed for the line and got over with four balls to spare.
"I am very proud of the guys, to be honest," said England captain Collingwood.
"The way they’ve fought all the way through the tournament, which has been a rollercoaster ride for us, has been terrific.
"At one point in that game I thought we had a real chance of winning it.
"To get yourselves in that sort of position shows that we’ve got a lot of character in the side because it’s not easy defending a total like that off nine overs.
"In truth, we were probably not one wicket away from winning.
There’s so little time and with the amount of overs that you’ve got, wickets don’t make a lot of difference.
"And give them a bit of credit because even when we did get the yorkers in they managed to get them for four and we weren’t quite good enough on the day."
There was no doubt that the re-calculation once overs are lost in such a short game always favours the batting side but Collingwood insisted the weather did not come into his thinking after winning the toss in the must-win Super Eights match.
"It didn’t play any part,"
said Collingwood. "Not at all.
I looked at the weather forecast and the website I looked at said a 20 per cent chance of rain.
"I thought ‘that’s okay’, so it wasn’t even in the back of my mind. I was expecting 40 overs of cricket today and obviously we were trying to play to our strength."
Having defended scores successfully against Pakistan and India, however, this was a different proposition and West Indies kept attacking throughout, unperturbed by losing dangerman Dwayne Bravo to another brilliant James Foster stumping.
The West Indians were 45 for five at that point, in the sixth over, but they finally overcame their hoodoo in international cricket against England this summer – four losses out of four had preceded this knockout match – as pacemen James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Ryan Sidebottom were taken for 31 in 14 balls.
"It was very satisfying,"
said West Indies captain Chris Gayle. "They got the better of us this summer and it was good to have the final say in a crucial game.
"I’m so emotional about this victory for the guys with the efforts they put in. It was a good overall performance.
"In nine overs, anything could have happened. Credit to England for the way they started but we pulled it back there.
"One more good game and we’re in the final. We’ve been written off so it’s good to be in the semi-finals.
"We were written off before the tournament but people should respect us.
"We have been dominant in the past and have just been through a bad patch in our cricket. People can’t take us for granted."
This was the third time in seven months that Gayle has led a side to 20-over victory over England and asked whether he favoured this one or the Stanford Superstars pay day last November, he replied: "This definitely means more . . ."
After bursting into laughter, he added: "You are trying to get me in trouble."
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