DUR­BAN–Team man­ag­er Sir Richie Richard­son cel­e­brat­ed his 53rd birth­day on Mon­day and says West In­dies' his­toric suc­cess­ful run chase to beat South Africa in Sun­day's sec­ond Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al was the per­fect gift.

One of the finest bats­men to have played the Test and one-day game, Sir Richie watched from the dugout as West In­dies pulled off the high­est ever run chase in T20 In­ter­na­tion­al his­to­ry, to win by four wick­ets with four balls to spare at the Wan­der­ers in Jo­han­nes­burg.

Open­er Chris Gayle smashed 90 from 41 balls and Mar­lon Samuels, 60 from 39 de­liv­er­ies, to pow­er West In­dies to their tar­get of 232.

"I would first of all like to thank the guys for the birth­day gift. It was in­deed some­thing very spe­cial," said the for­mer Test cap­tain.

"We all know the qual­i­ty of the team, the tal­ent that we have and once the guys ap­ply them­selves and play to their po­ten­tial we can beat any­body in the world."

Sir Richie was a dom­i­nant bats­man in his hey­day, com­pil­ing 5,949 runs from 86 Tests at an av­er­age of 44, with 16 hun­dreds. He al­so amassed over 6,248 runs from 224 ODIs at an av­er­age of 33.

He played along­side the likes of leg­endary bats­man Sir Vi­vian Richards, Desmond Haynes and Gor­don Greenidge in a ca­reer span­ning 13 years but said he was left as­ton­ished by the sav­agery of Gayle and Samuels.

"It's un­be­liev­able re­al­ly. I've seen some hit­ting in my time but Chris Gayle he stands out. His bat is so huge, he's so pow­er­ful, he's so de­struc­tive and when he's go­ing it doesn't mat­ter who is bowl­ing and what sort of de­liv­ery they bowl to him, he can put it away," Sir Richie point­ed out.

"In these two match­es he has shown that he's prob­a­bly the best T20 bats­man in the world to­day. Mar­lon was there with him scor­ing just as freely but with a dif­fer­ent style, play­ing el­e­gant shots, prop­er crick­et shots and scor­ing just as freely.

"It was just great to see both bats­men bat­ting to­geth­er. Chris was dom­i­nant but Mar­lon played some re­al­ly, re­al­ly sweet shots, he timed the ball very, very well and it was great to see both bats­men bat­ting to­geth­er."

The vic­to­ry gave the Caribbean side a win­ning 2-0 lead in the three-match se­ries, with one match left to play at Kingsmead on Wednes­day.

How­ev­er, Sir Richie said the Windies were now high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed by the thought of mak­ing a clean sweep, es­pe­cial­ly against a strong side like South Africa.

"It is not of­ten that a team that is ranked be­low the top team white­wash­es them so that's the fo­cus of the team at the mo­ment. We're not go­ing to re­lax, we've won the se­ries yes, and we'll cel­e­brate it but we're sav­ing the cel­e­bra­tion for af­ter the next match," he said.

"I've al­ways said it's nev­er over till it's over. I don't be­lieve in cel­e­brat­ing too ear­ly. Our goal now is to win the se­ries 3-0 and ac­cu­mu­late some [rat­ings] points and move up in the rank­ings. That's the mood in the camp and we're just look­ing for­ward to the next match.

"We're go­ing to dig deep and hope­ful­ly we can have an­oth­er suc­cess­ful match."