Samuels fined for jibes after Stokes choker

both feet resting on a table at the postmatch press conference, needed no urging to rub salt in Stokes’s wounds. ‘Well, he doesn’t learn,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even face a ball and he had so much to say to me that I knew I had to be right there at the end ... again. That’s what I thrive on. ‘Stokes is a nervous laddie, so what I told Brathwaite was to just hold his pose and he’s going to bowl a couple of full tosses — as always — and it will work in our favour.’ Stokes was not the only target of Samuels’s personal brand of vitriol. Shane Warne, the leg-spin legend who has clashed with Samuels in the past and was critical on TV of his performance in Thursday’s semi-final against India, earned a special mention. After dedicating his man of the match award to Warne for the benefit of TV viewers, Samuels, later fined 30 per cent of his match fee for his on-field behaviour, warmed to his theme. ‘Every team I play for, Shane Warne has a problem with me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what: I’ve never disrespected him. But it seems he has a lot inside him that he needs to come out. I don’t appreciate the way he continues to talk about me, and the things he keeps doing. I don’t know, maybe it is because my face is real and his face is not.’ A desire to score points has informed much of West Indies’ behaviour in recent weeks, with captain Darren Sammy successfully cultivating a siege mentality. An ongoing pay dispute with the West Indian administrators meant that, towards the end of an emotional speech on the podium, Sammy mentioned the messages of support he and his team had received throughout the tournament, but pointedly added: ‘I’m yet to hear from our own cricket board. That’s very disappointing.’ For England skipper Eoin Morgan, the disappointment had a different focus. ‘Cricket can be a cruel game,’ he said. ‘Ben’s going to be devastated and it will take its toll. But we share everything we do, we stick together as a side, we share the pain. ‘It’s frightening to think what we can do if we achieve our potential. ‘I can’t fault anything we did with the ball or in the field. But we let ourselves down tremendously with the bat. I thought we were terrible. We were maybe 40 short.’