ST JOHN'S–Sir Viv Richards, one of crick­et's finest ever cap­tains, has thrown his sup­port be­hind Twen­ty20 skip­per Dar­ren Sam­my in his de­ci­sion to slam the West In­dies Crick­et Board for their lack of sup­port for the squad dur­ing the re­cent Twen­ty20 World Cup in In­dia.

In a rare flir­ta­tion with con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing the post-match cer­e­mo­ny fol­low­ing Sun­day's fi­nal, Sam­my said the team felt "dis­re­spect­ed" by the WICB and had not heard from the An­tigua-based or­ga­ni­za­tion dur­ing their suc­cess­ful cam­paign.

"I don't think Sam­my would be a liar. I think Sam­my is as hon­est as they come so it is go­ing to be quite in­ter­est­ing, go­ing for­ward, to see and to hear ex­act­ly what comes from the board," Sir Viv, who nev­er lost a Test se­ries as West In­dies cap­tain, told the Ob­serv­er news­pa­per here.

He con­tin­ued: "Sam­my did what he had to do. It was on his mind and you could see what he said meant a lot; it came from the heart. In my mind, it looked like some­thing planned.

"Any­one who knows Dar­ren Sam­my knows that he is an in­di­vid­ual and how he would have led West In­dies crick­et from his very start as cap­tain, and sees how com­mit­ted he is. So I am pleased, in a big way, that he was able to get it off his chest."

Pri­or to the squad's de­par­ture for the pre-World Cup train­ing camp in Dubai, Sam­my found him­self at the cen­tre of a brief im­passe be­tween the play­ers and the WICB over re­mu­ner­a­tion for the tour­na­ment.

Act­ing as the play­ers' rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Sam­my la­belled the pay of­fer "to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able" in a let­ter to the board and asked for a re­turn to the pre­vi­ous pay struc­ture.

The pro­pos­al was re­ject­ed by the board who said the agree­ment had been al­ready ham­mered out with play­ers' union, WIPA.

West In­dies cre­at­ed his­to­ry at the T20 World Cup when they swept both the men's and women's ti­tles last Sun­day. The women downed three-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Aus­tralia Women by eight wick­ets while the men fol­lowed up with a sen­sa­tion­al last-over four-wick­et vic­to­ry over Eng­land.

Sir Viv, who av­er­aged 50 in 121 Tests be­tween 1974 and 1991, said the board now need­ed to har­ness the en­er­gy from this achieve­ment, along with that of the Un­der-19s suc­cess at the Youth World Cup ear­li­er this year.

"There are some hun­gry folks out there and es­pe­cial­ly with the ex­cite­ment with what would have been cre­at­ed from the three ver­sions like the Un­der-19, the women's fac­tor then the men do­ing what they did on Sun­day," Sir Viv said.

"The in­ter­est would cer­tain­ly be there, so we need to try and get in­to some ar­eas where we haven't tapped be­fore to try and find some of these fast bowlers that maybe, can help to make a dif­fer­ence in the fu­ture. I don't think enough of that would have been done in the past."