Congratulations, South Africa, you deserve it.

No fairytale ending for Andre Russell, but he shouldn’t be so hard on himself, the single was on.

Rain was not the reason for our defeat, not even the DLS method for the revised score because we almost won it.

At this level, these are fine margins, and these are the defeats where the regret of not taking a single, or running the first one hard, and using soft hands to steal runs in open spaces haunt us deeply.

Ian Bishop has been lamenting since he had hair on his head about the West Indies’s dot-ball percentage and the lack of running between the wickets in all formats of the game. So, it’s not like franchise cricket has caused this, because the players do it overseas in the same T20 format.

The WI was given a stern warning against England, having accumulated 51 dot balls, and we lost. That didn’t wake up our cricketers as they failed to score off 57 balls against South Africa. Then they are scratching their heads wondering how they lost this game?

Daren Sammy has to take the blame for this. How could he have not seen red flags earlier and rectified the issue? I’ll tell you why – because he’s living in 2012 and 2016 and not focused on the game at hand. Play the game, not the occasion.

I wouldn’t trade the 3-0 series win against South Africa for a win in the World Cup. I want both! Bear in mind that half of those players didn’t play in that series, so there’s no excuse.

The West Indies must learn the hard way. Chin up, fellas, and swallow it.

I am proud of the team, I am proud of our progress in all formats these past couple years. I support Sammy, Rovman Powell and the West Indies players 10,000 per cent, all of them. But if we want to be number one, just like South Africa in all its previous ICC tourneys, we must learn the hard way.

KENDELL KARAN

Chaguanas