Stanford deserves some credit for Windies success

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 10: The West Indies won the T20 Championships but you can trace their success back to Allen Stanford. He was the one that started the Twenty20, which gave the West Indies a headstart on everyone else.

They have been struggling with Test cricket, One-day cricket for years now. But he had a vision with Twenty20 and you can look at their players like Bravo, Badree, Ramdin and Pollard who all played for Trinidad when they won the first couple of those tournaments.

As a team, they became specialist Twenty20 players as they came through the Stanford tournament then played in the IPL and the Champions League.

Stanford deserves the praise for starting it which has helped the West Indies become Twenty20 champions.

This is their first major trophy since 1979 when they won the 50 over World Cup. They really haven’t won anything in 30 years, although they did take the Champions League in 2004.

This will bring the West Indies a lot of pride because they are cricket fanatics. Outside of the subcontinent, the West Indies are known as a cricketing nation. Their fans have been looking forward to this for a long time and they deserve it. I’m sure they will party on until the next T20 World Cup.

Where the West Indies won was they managed to get sixes on wickets that were slow and runs were hard to come by.

We didn’t see very many big, big scores. They won it because of their sixes. They hit more of them than any other team in the tournament.

Other teams got tied down and couldn’t get themselves out of a bad situation — like Sri Lanka — because they had no six-hitters in their team.

Every time Sri Lanka tried to hit a six they were out, whereas the West Indies always doubled their opponents when it came to hitting sixes.

West Indies also had the most duck balls, but they also had twice as many sixes. Now that’s good for Twenty20, but it’s not going to work out for them in 50 overs cricket or Test match so they’ll have to work on that part of their game.

The West Indies struggle with Test cricket because they play too many shots.

But they have a good staff, management and coach now, plus they are working hard so better days are coming.

Women’s T20

The women’s tournament was played at the same time and they were very, very impressive.

The Australians ended up defending their title but you can see the investment in the sport.

They are on par with a lot of the male teams around the world. They lack the power that a man does, but you can see the fabulous stroke play they have and the lines and lengths when they bowl.

It was great planning on the ICC to have both the men and women playing at the same time in the same country.

The women played before the men, which was great because it helped promote the women’s game. That was just excellent. They were absolutely amazing. They were very, very fit.

• Lionel Cann is the coach of Warwick Workman's Club and a former national team player.