Sammy: Afghanistan defeat will not define our tournament

"We're quite disappointed that we lost the game, but we won't let that define our tournament," West Indies captain Darren Sammy said after his team lost to Afghanistan in its final Super 10 match in the ongoing World Twenty20.

West Indies captain Darren Sammy attributed his team's inability to chase the relatively modest total to lack of responsibility from his batsmen.

West Indies captain Darren Sammy has told his side to forget its surprise Super 10 defeat against Afghanistan as it prepares for a World Twenty20 semifinal on Thursday. West Indies came into its final group match on Sunday having already qualified for the last four, but lost its unbeaten record as Associate nation Afghanistan defended a modest total of 123 for 7 to win by six runs and end its campaign on a high.

> Afghanistan stuns West Indies, claims six-run win to end World Twenty20 campaign on a high.

Sammy's men, winners of the 2012 World Twenty20, can nevertheless look forward to a last-four meeting with either India or Australia in Mumbai. "We're quite disappointed that we lost the game, but we won't let that define our tournament," said Sammy. 

"Whatever happened today doesn't affect how we're going to play in the semis. We'll leave this game here and see it as the blip in the tournament. Now we have two knockouts to play, two more steps, semi-finals in Mumbai, take that step, then Kolkata here we come [for the final]," he said.

Sammy insisted West Indies had not taken its foot off the gas with qualification already secured. "No, we didn't take it lightly," he added. "They are a side we are supposed to beat and we just didn't do that. But the main objective coming out of the Super 10 was to qualify for the semis, and that we did.

Lack of healthy partnerships

"It's a total we should have got. I think we just kept losing wickets, all throughout the innings. We didn't really have one partnership. One partnership of fifty plus would have won us the game. At the end of the day we just didn't play smart enough.

"The games we have won, every match, somebody took responsibility to bat through. Chris [Gayle] did it in the first game, [Andre] Fletcher did it in the second and Marlon [Samuels] did it in the third, so this time nobody did it, nobody took responsibility – just left it for the next man to come."

The Windies will assess a right hamstring injury sustained by Fletcher, which forced the allrounder to retire hurt before briefly returning at the end of his side's unsuccessful chase.