"You never wake up a sleeping lion" - Darren Sammy to James Faulkner

Darren Sammy of the West Indies is congratulated by Chris Gayle and the rest of his teammates after hitting the winning runs during the ICC World Twenty20 Bangladesh 2014 match between Australia and the West Indies at Sher-e-Bangla Mirpur Stadium on March 28, 2014 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

After pulling off a stunning victory against Australia by scoring an incredible 34* off 13 in their Group 2 encounter earlier today, Darren Sammy responded to James Faulkner’s jibe ahead of the match in which the Australian fast bowler had said that he did not ‘particularly like’ the West Indians.

Faulkner’s comments were apparently made in bad taste, and the West Indians could not have given a more fitting reply to their opponents than what they did today.

Darren Sammy said: “We backed ourselves to score 180-odd. Chris and Dwayne Smith set us up and we are really pumped up for the win. It was really nice to see Faulkner bowling the last over. A lot of things were said before this match and you never wake up a sleeping lion. Our team was up for this game.”

The cricketing world saw a different Chris Gayle today as compared to the impersonator in the first couple of matches, where he meandered his way to painful run-a-ball knocks. It appears that Faulkner was the reason for that transformation, too. On Gayle’s 35-ball 53, which set the stage for Dwayne Bravo and himself to unleash those big hits towards the later part of the innings, Sammy said: “Chris wanted to stay until the end. He has not been scoring at the rate he usually has been scoring but we were pumped up for this game. You would have seen the celebrations. It was a great effort”

“I think they played well. A couple of bowlers like Sunil Narine and Krishmar Santokie bowled economically. Chris and Dwayne Smith gave us a good start at the front.”

Faulkner had said: “I don’t particularly like them. Good players are good players. You have to do things to get under their skin and try and irritate them to try and get them off their game. Players do that to me and I do it to other players. It’s a fact of the game. A lot of it is played in your mind. If you can do something to upset somebody and upset their team, it goes a long way towards doing well as a group.”