Shai Hope accepts blame for West Indies’ T20 World Cup exit

In the T20I series in South Africa, West Indies thumped 173/7 at the low-scoring Boland Park, 221/4 in Centurion, and 114/3 at the Wanderers where rain reduced the innings to 10 overs. Zimbabwe were blown to the smithereens recently with a total of 254/6, so India were obviously smirking at the fact that Shai Hope had faced 17 dots in a knock lasting 33 balls. ‘’Probably didn’t start as well as we wanted to with the bat,’’ the skipper admitted after their loss in the T20 World Cup 2026 virtual quarter-final in Kolkata.

“Yes, I’ll take the blame,” Hope said when asked if his innings had a bearing on them being eliminated in the last Super Eights game. He admitted he had not operated at the tempo he usually likes to.

“I should have batted a lot faster” he said. “But in a situation like this, when you’re struggling, I don’t think I was batting badly. It’s just I was hitting it to the fielders, and then trying to play the situation a bit more.”

“It’s one of those things, sometimes you just don’t get the ball away. As much as we would love to come and hit every single ball, but it just doesn’t happen. I hit a few fielders today as well, so it didn’t help. Then I thought India bowled pretty well, to be fair.”