Dwayne Bravo Recalls Contract Fallout With Windies Cricket Board, Says N Srinivasan Offered To Pay

Former Windies captain Dwayne Bravo on Friday opened up about the 2014 tour to India where the tour had to be called off after the fourth ODI due to a contract dispute between the players and their national cricket board. During a chat show on i955fm, a Trinidad-based radio station, Dwayne Bravo said that the then-BCCI chief N Srinivasan had asked him to "take the field" and offered to pay the Windies team whatever they were losing out on. "I remember fully well before we said we weren't going to play the first game, 3 am in the morning, I get a message from the BCCI boss, the old one, Mr [N] Srinivasan, that 'please take the field'", ESPNcricinfo quoted Bravo as saying to i955fm. 

"I listened to him - and woke up at 6 am to tell the team that we have to play. And everyone was against playing. Everyone thought that I panicked and chickened out and all these things," Bravo further said.

"Yeah, they (BCCI) understood, of course. Because they were very supportive of all of us. Actually they even offered to pay us whatever we were losing. We was like, 'we don't want you to pay us. We need our board to sort out our contracts.' The BCCI was very, very supportive and that is one of the reasons why most of us were still able to continue playing without any serious, serious problems taking place," Bravo added.

The players had threatened to quit the tour as they were sent on the India tour with a 75 percent cut in the contracts without negotiating with any players.

However, Bravo said that it was a unanimous decision by the Windies players to "walk away from the tour".

"Collectively as a team, we decided what to do. I listened to every single player. Apart from one player, everyone signed on a piece of paper, that they were all in support of leaving the tour. But we did not just decide to walk away from the tour. There were different times when we tried to reach out to both our WIPA president (Wavell Hinds) and the cricket president (Dave Cameron, Cricket West Indies president)," Bravo said.

"So we threatened [to pull out] from the first game, but we played. We threatened for the second game, but we played. The [fourth] game we went out (the whole team accompanied Bravo to the toss), so it was just a message and a signal, trying to let them know that we are not happy with whatever is going on," Bravo further added.

Topics mentioned in this article

West Indies Cricket Team India Cricket Team Dwayne Bravo Cricket