After Lendl Simmons’ blistering 51-ball 82 helped West Indies beat India by seven wickets and storm into the final of the World T20 in Mumbai on Thursday, the Caribbeans were overjoyed and understandably so.
After the match, Windies captain Darren Sammy and all-rounder Dwayne Bravo led the team back to the hotel doing a celebratory jig to the song “Champion”, a single written and sung by Bravo himself, blaring from a portable speaker in Sammy’s hands.
As the chorus of ‘champion..champion’ echoed, Sammy and Bravo continued dancing to applause from the team’s support staff and members of the West Indies’ women’s team, who also made it to the final and will face Australia for the title, while hotel staff and guests looked on, amused.
Here’s that celebration:
Celebrating wins with dance has become a bit of a West Indies trademark. Earlier on Thursday, the Windies women beat the New Zealand White Ferns by six runs to make their first World T20 final. Here’s how they celebrated:
{{/usCountry}}Celebrating wins with dance has become a bit of a West Indies trademark. Earlier on Thursday, the Windies women beat the New Zealand White Ferns by six runs to make their first World T20 final. Here’s how they celebrated:
{{/usCountry}}When Bravo took a catch in the deep to dismiss Ajinkya Rahane, he turned towards the crowd and celebrated with a toned-down version of the “Champion Dance”. Bravo also posted on Instagram a video of him and Chris Gayle dancing to the song in the dining hall of the Wankhede stadium after the match.
In 2012, when West Indies beat Sri Lanka to win their first World T20 title, they did the ‘Gangnam Style’, the dance popularised by the eponymous viral K-Pop single which became the first video to garner a billion views on YouTube.
Here’s the original video to Dwayne Bravo’s “Champion”
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