Dwayne Bravo: A Champion Cricketer and Dancer

No one can look at the international career of Dwayne Bravo and say that he was a failure. He played a significant part in the only global successes that the West Indies have enjoyed since their 1970s and 1980s heyday— the 2004 Champions Trophy and the T20 World Cup in 2012 and 2016. But he played his last Test when he was just 27 and was eased out of the ODI side just a few days after turning 31.

In an era when the West Indies players and administrators frequently clashed, Bravo was one of those to pay a heavy price, often overlooked for selection even though his skills were never in doubt. He was good enough to score a Test century against Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, and his changes of pace and other variations fetched him nearly 200 ODI wickets. But at a time when players from the Caribbean were relatively poorly paid, Bravo joined the band of cricketers who preferred to focus on T20 leagues around the world.

In the game’s shortest format, his legacy is unmatched. Bravo has won the Indian T20 League 3 times with Chennai, though it annoyed him greatly that his 2 finest seasons with the ball (2013 and 2015) saw the team fall at the final hurdle. Despite lacking the fearsome pace of those he grew up watching as a kid, Bravo is by far the most successful bowler in T20 history. Add in close to 7,000 runs in the format and it’s not hard to see why the Chennai team opted to spend ₹4.4 crores to bring him back to the fold before the 2022 season.

The Mumbai team was the first to take a chance on him in the Indian T20 League and he helped them to their first final in 2010. But it’s in the Chennai team's yellow jersey that he performed his most stunning feats, winning the Purple Cap twice along the way. For the West Indies, he played his part in two T20 World Cup wins, stitching together valuable partnerships with Marlon Samuels in both the 2012 and 2016 finals. In the second game, he took 3 wickets, though his contribution was eclipsed by the stunning batting of Samuels and Carlos Brathwaite.

Bravo retired from international cricket after the T20 World Cup in the UAE in 2021. He will be 39 later this year, but his 14 wickets during the Indian T20 League in 2021, along with his blistering lower-order hitting, suggest that he could be a force for a couple more seasons. And where there’s Bravo, music and dance will never be far away.

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