Marlon Samuels has launched a stunning verbal tirade at Australian spin king Shane Warne after the West Indies won the World T20 final in dramatic fashion on Sunday night, reports cricket.com.au. Samuels was named man of the match for his unbeaten 85, but his focus quickly turned to Warne after the match when he was presented with his trophy. ‘This is for Shane Warne,’ Samuels said, while looking at the award at the post-match presentation ceremony.
Warne has had a running feud with Samuels stretching back to a mid-pitch altercation between the two in the second season of the KFC Big Bash League in 2013 where the leg-spinner threw a ball at the batsman, who then hurled his bat in the bowler’s direction.
The grudge resurfaced during the West Indies’ semi-final upset over India in Mumbai on Thursday, when Warne called Samuels ‘embarrassing’ and ‘pretty boring’ following his dismissal for eight to left-arm fast bowler Ashish Nehra.
‘Well, this is a bit embarrassing for Marlon Samuels,’ Warne said.
‘Look where he is. He’s nearly off the pitch backing away again. He’s backed away every ball.
‘And all it was just a normal length ball from Ashish Nehra. I said the ball before, if he can give him a good short one and get one outside off stump that Marlon Samuels was backing away so much he nearly couldn’t reach it.
‘For your No.3, Marlon Samuels, in this situation in such a big game, that’s an embarrassing dismissal. That’s pretty poor.’
Samuels bounced back with a stunning knock in the final to sink England in astonishing fashion, but while his innings was elegant and crafty, his message for Warne was arguably petulant and classless.
‘I played a Test series in Australia (in 2015-16) and every day, Shane Warne has a problem with me,’ Samuels said, feet on the table, at his post-match press conference.
‘I don’t know what (I did). I’ve never disrespected him.
‘Seems as if he has a lot inside him that he needs to come out.
‘So I don’t appreciate the way he continues to talk to about me and the things that he keeps doing.
‘I don’t know. Maybe because my face is real and his face is not?’
Warne is not the only player Samuels shares a controversial relationship with.
England’s Ben Stokes received a standing salute from Samuels in the Caribbean in April last year when the allrounder was dismissed.
It sparked a fire between the two, and Samuels says he ‘thrives’ when opposition teams target and sledge him.
‘Well he doesn’t learn,’ Samuels said. ‘Because they keep telling him, whenever he plays against me (they say) ‘don’t speak to me, because I’m going to perform’.
‘I didn’t even face a ball and he had so much to say today so I know that I have to be right there until the end, again.’
Stokes was the bowler in the final over who conceded four straight sixes to juggernaut Carlos Brathwaite, who delivered the West Indies their second World T20 title in the most remarkable way imaginable.
Samuels said Stokes is a ‘nervous lad’ and that he told Brathwaite to hold his pose in the final over.
‘He (Stokes) is going to bowl a couple of full tosses, as always, and it worked in our favour,’ Samuels said.
-With New Age input
