Samuels leads home West Indies to shock T20 hosts Sri Lanka

The Windies’ 36-run win looked a highly unlikely outcome for much of the ICC World Twenty20 final, but in the end Marlon Samuels’s belligerent 78 from 56 balls turned the match.

Samuels saw a clutch of his fellow top-order ball-strikers fail to register on a slow but fair pitch. He did not panic, however, and pushed his team up to 137-6 – a total which, contrary to expectation, proved far too many for Sri Lanka.

It was a turn of events which deflated the vast majority in a partisan 35,000 sell-out crowd.

But it may conversely breathe new life into West Indies cricket for years to come, after a generation of mediocrity since the heydays of the 1970s and 80s.

While Sammy’s opposite number Mahela Jayawardene had to come to terms with a fourth successive defeat in a world final for Sri Lanka – he also confirmed his resignation as Twenty20 captain afterwards – the Windies were revelling in their overdue success.

“We can definitely cherish this moment – I will for sure – and we can relive it every day of our lives,” said Sammy.

“This is the best moment for me in any cricket.

“This is for the Caribbean people, the West Indies fans all over the world.

“They’ve been craving success. It’s party time now from Jamaica down to Guyana – and we know how to party – so they’ll need a lot of bartenders.”

Even Sammy must have had his doubts when the Windies crawled to 14-2 in the six-over powerplay, after choosing to bat first.

But he said: “God works in mysterious ways – he performs wonders. It is the belief we have in the side. We expected them to give us a fight, and they did, but throughout the last year we’ve been showing that never-say-die attitude.

“We’ve not been winning games with it. It’s been taking us close, but in this tournament we’ve won games - and that’s every man believing that whoever is out there can do the job.

“Today it was Marlon Samuels, and in the end every run counted – and then the bowling and fielding display was just brilliant.

“I said we needed our A-plus game, and we definitely did.”