West Indies’ skipper Shai Hope plays a shot at Eden Gardens. (ANI Photo)

NEW DELHI: West Indies captain Shai Hope did not hide behind excuses after his side’s T20 World Cup campaign ended with a defeat to defending champions India at Eden Gardens. Instead, he stood up and took responsibility.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!India chased down a challenging 196-run target to knock the former champions out in a must-win Super Eight clash on Sunday. But Hope admitted the total could have been far more imposing had he accelerated at the top.“Yes, I’ll take the blame. I should have batted a lot faster — if that’s what you want me to say,” Hope said candidly in the post-match media interaction. “When you’re leading, you want to put your hand up and set the tone at the top. It didn’t happen for me today. I just didn’t get going.”

Hope’s 32 off 33 balls — including 17 dot deliveries — stalled momentum in a high-scoring contest. Though he insisted he was not batting poorly, he conceded that the tempo hurt the team.“In situations like this, when you’re struggling, everyone struggles. But I don’t think I was batting badly,” he explained. “I hit a few fielders and they bowled well. As much as you’d love to hit every ball for six, it doesn’t happen.”West Indies were 45 without loss in the powerplay after targeting 65–70. “We had a platform. With the batting depth we have, I didn’t see it as a big issue at the time, but we didn’t execute as well as we wanted,” Hope admitted.Despite late acceleration from Roston Chase, Rovman Powell and Jason Holder lifting them to 195/4, the total proved 20 runs short on a dewy surface.“Here in Eden Gardens, chasing is usually better, especially with the dew. It always becomes a factor,” Hope said, also lamenting his poor run with the toss. “I don’t think I could win a toss… that always puts me on the back foot.”Calling it a “game of small margins,” Hope added, “One team has to win.”He reserved special praise for India’s match-winner Sanju Samson, whose unbeaten 97 sealed the chase. “He shot the ball very nicely from the beginning all the way through to the end… very smart and calculated. You must give him an A-plus. But we wish he didn’t have that innings today.”Even in defeat, Hope chose perspective. “There are a lot of positives. Our bowling was much better… the powerplay bowling especially stood up.”

Former cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar urged the Indian team management not to repeat mistakes like pushing Sanju Samson down the order to make room for someone like Shubman Gill in the playing XI. The star wicket-keeper’s momentum was severely hampered after he was demoted from the opener’s role ahead of the 2025 Asia Cup campaign.

Sanju Samson clawed his way back into the top-order spot after a whirlwind set of months. He made a massive statement with his match-winning, and unbeaten 97 against the West Indies to propel India to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup 2026.

Sanju Samson had a dismal run in the middle order, and even though the selectors made the call to reinstate him at the top before the World Cup, he could not find his rhythm from before. Sanjay Manjrekar hoped that such selection calls are avoided in the future.

“Sanju Samson came to the fore. Now, I have said this before as well, this is a guy who has only recently got 3 T20I hundreds in five games, but to accommodate Shubman Gill after his brilliant Test form, Samson was pushed down the order, and Gill was made to open. Now these kind of blunders cannot happen. You cannot repeat these blunders, because it has taken a while for Samson to find that spot,” Sanjay Manjrekar said in a post on his Instagram account.

“The thing about Sanju Samson, which is different from Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, or Tilak Varma, is that a lot of the young batters that are coming through are trying to force the T20 big game into their game. Sanju Samson was already a force as a young player, he always had this talent and still has that big hitting ability to good balls and playing normal shots,” he added.

Sanju Samson had shown glimpses of form during his brief cameos against Namibia and Zimbabwe in the campaign recently. However, he went levels ahead to headline the run chase for India in the do-or-die clash against the West Indies at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

“I must confess, at the halfway stage, I was worried” – Sanjay Manjrekar’s admission regarding IND vs WI T20 World Cup 2026 Super 8 match

Sanjay Manjrekar admitted that he had his doubts over the shaky Indian batting after they were presented with a mammoth 196-run target. With the pressure of elimination looming, and the expectations of the home crowd, the batters navigated through the challenge seamlessly to record the third-highest run chase in T20 World Cup history.

“What a game. Bit of nervousness, tension. It seemed like we were already in the semis and finals, such was the atmosphere around the game, and once the West Indies got 190 (195), it became even more intense. I must confess, at the halfway stage, I was worried, because Indian batting has not been top notch. I thought this was going to be a real tester for India,” Sanjay Manjrekar said.

Team India progressed into the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup for the sixth time, and for the third edition in a row after the win over the Shai Hope-led side. They will next face England at the Wankhede Stadium, on Thursday, March 5.