BCCI offered to pay whatever we were losing, says Dwayne Bravo, speaking on the contract dispute with WICB
Former Trinidadian player Dwayne Bravo has revealed that the BCCI offered to pay the West Indies player who had threatened to omit themselves from India vs West Indies ODI Series in 2014, as a result of a contracts fallout with the West Indies Cricket Board.
Dwayne Bravo, who was the captain of West Indies at that time, said that he tried to convince his players to participate in the first ODI after threatening to pull out, after receiving an offer message from the then BCCI chief Narayanaswami Srinivasan at 3 am.
"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," said the 35-year-old all-rounder.
"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 added.
Srinivasan's company was also the owner of the IPL franchise Chennai Super Kings, the team Bravo was a part of in 2014.
However, when the fourth ODI was being played, WICB passed a notice to the BCCI informing that they had decided to call up the remaining tour fixtures, due to a contract dispute with their players.
Bravo also said that the BCCI was very supportive towards them as they even offered to pay all the losses their players had.
"Yeah, they understood, of course. Actually, they even offered to pay us whatever we were losing. We were 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," said Bravo, who recently hung up his boots from international cricket.
Bravo also went on to mention that the decision was consentient as every player, except one, agreed to leave 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]. So we threatened [to pull out] from the first game, but we played," the CSK superstar said.
“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," he concluded.