Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low is show­er­ing praise on the West In­dies af­ter their ex­it from the ICC T20 Crick­et World Cup in In­dia on Sun­day.

The West In­dies lost to co-hosts In­dia by five wick­ets at Eden Gar­dens as they fin­ished 3rd in the Su­per Eight Group. One with two points be­hind South Africa (6 points) and In­dia (4 points).

The West In­dies won all of their match­es in the Group Stage with wins against Eng­land, Nepal, Italy and Scot­land be­fore beat­ing Zim­bab­we in their open­ing Su­per Eight match.

On the Crick­et West In­dies web­site on Mon­day, Dr Shal­low not­ed, “While we are dis­ap­point­ed that our jour­ney con­clud­ed at Eden Gar­dens in Kolkata against the In­dia na­tion­al crick­et team, the tour­na­ment as a whole re­flect­ed growth, be­lief and to­geth­er­ness. Win­ning five of sev­en match­es and ad­vanc­ing to the Su­per 8s is a tes­ta­ment to the prepa­ra­tion and com­mit­ment of this group.”

Shal­low added, “Most en­cour­ag­ing was the spir­it of re­solve and fight dis­played through­out the com­pe­ti­tion, a spir­it that was need­ed more than ever. That de­ter­mi­na­tion and pride in rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion strength­ened con­fi­dence across the Caribbean and re­mind­ed us of the char­ac­ter of West In­dies crick­et.”

Pres­i­dent of KFC Clarke Road, Bal­dath Ma­habir, was al­so in praise of the Caribbean team.

The for­mer CWI di­rec­tor not­ed, “West In­dies has done bet­ter than al­most every­one had ex­pect­ed.”

Ma­habir added, “They were not dis­graced in any way. Ac­tu­al­ly, the team would have en­hanced its re­cent rep­u­ta­tion. They can all be proud, and we, too, should be proud of them; they have rep­re­sent­ed us well.”

How­ev­er, for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go open­er An­dre Lawrence was singing a dif­fer­ent tune. The crick­et an­a­lyst was not im­pressed with the per­for­mance of the ‘men in ma­roon’.

“My opin­ion is that I thought we had an easy road in the pre­lim­i­nary round, and as I said, we’re go­ing to get through the pre­lim­i­nary round. We had teams like Italy, Eng­land, Nepal and Scot­land,” Lawrence as­sert­ed.

Lawrence added, “For me, you’re sup­posed to beat those teams. They did well enough to beat those teams. Eng­land fal­tered against them, and so that was well done. They seemed ready for this tour­na­ment. But that doesn’t mean that they were good enough to win. They were nev­er good enough to win this tour­na­ment.”

Af­ter the West In­dies beat Zim­bab­we, they lost against the un­beat­en South Africa and reign­ing cham­pi­ons In­dia in the Su­per Eight stage.

“It showed up when they reached the Su­per Eights. Very much like the last World Cup, when we had to play in­to the sec­ond round of the tour­na­ment, we fal­tered.”

Mean­while, the West In­dies have im­proved in their T20 World Cup per­for­mances since Sam­my took over as coach in 2023.

In 2021, the for­mer two-time cham­pi­ons lost four out of five match­es in the Su­per 12 stage they had qual­i­fied di­rect­ly to, and the fol­low­ing year, in 2022, they failed to reach the Su­per Eight, fin­ish­ing last in the group that in­clud­ed Zim­bab­we, Ire­land and Scot­land.

Un­der Sam­my in 2024, the West In­dies de­feat­ed New Zealand on their way to win­ning all four match­es in their First Round Group C, which al­so in­clud­ed wins against Ugan­da, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea. They fin­ished third in the Su­per Eight Group 2, win­ning against the USA but los­ing to South Africa and Eng­land.

In 2026, the West In­dies again won all four match­es in the first round, beat­ing Eng­land, Nepal, Italy and Scot­land in Group C be­fore los­ing to South Africa and In­dia in the Su­per Eight Group 1, with their on­ly Su­per Eight win com­ing against Zim­bab­we.

The stats are not im­press­ing Lawrence.

“We are fal­ter­ing in World Cups. We’re sim­ply not get­ting through to the semi­fi­nal stages, and Sam­my has been in charge. So you can say what you like. You can say that we won more match­es, but look at the teams that we played against. Those were, in my view, much weak­er teams in world crick­et, ex­cept Eng­land.”

West In­dies will now fo­cus on the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al World Cup and must be ranked in the top eight qual­i­fiers by the end of March 2027 for di­rect qual­i­fi­ca­tion. How­ev­er, South Africa are cur­rent­ly ranked num­ber two and are au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fiers as hosts, so the rank­ing re­quire­ment is now the top nine teams in the ICC ODI rank­ing.