Vaughan tips West Indies as dark horses

Dubai: West Indies are the dark horses for the ICC World Twenty20, according to former England captain Michael Vaughan.

The Windies have twice made the semi-finals in 2009 and 2014 either side of their 2012 victory, and speaking on the sidelines of an audience with OSN’s T20 World Cup pundits at Emirates Golf Club’s fanzone on Monday, Vaughan tipped them for a surprise second win.

“The team that doesn’t get mentioned that much is the West Indies,” Vaughan told Gulf News ahead of England’s clash with the Windies in Mumbai on Wednesday. “But if you look at their squad, eight of them are regular IPL players, they’ve got a huge amount of power all the way down and bit of mystery about them as well.

“They’ve got a good leg spinner in Samuel Badree, Sulaiman Benn as left arm, Dwayne Bravo, Andre Russell, Darren Sammy, Jason Holder, then you’ve got the Gayle force [Chris Gayle] at the top of the order and Marlon Samuels as well.

“They’ve got some real quality in that team and they look to me that on any given day they could have a run and they’ve won it before. They seem to get life when they play T20, it’s like their bread and butter at the minute. The Tests are going in a different fashion and they are having all sorts of fallouts with the administrators but as soon as they play T20, they have a bit of life.

“If it’s not India [favourites and hosts], then I’ve got a funny feeling the West Indies might do it.”