When West Indies pulled out: Dwayne Bravo finally opens up on 2014 India tour debacle

In 2014, West Indies were in the middle of their Indian tour when their cricket board WICB informed BCCI that it had decided to call off the remainder of tour after a "contracts fall" with players.

West Indies, then led by Bravo, were supposed to play three Tests, five ODIs and one T20 international, but pulled out midway through the tour after the fourth ODI in Dharamsala.

Bravo, who recently announced his retirement from international cricket, has blamed the whole debacle as the reason behind his decision to quit cricket.  Bravo never played an ODI for West Indies since, and speaking to i955fm, a Trinidad-based radio station, the allrounder opened up on the pull-out of 2014.

Bravo, in the interview, talked about the events that transpired before the announcement.

“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). 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,” the 35-year-old said.

"BCCI supported and 'offered to pay' us"

Bravo also reveled that the BCCI "offered to pay" his players. 

He said that a message at 3 am from the then BCCI chief N Srinivasan prompted him to convince his team to play the first ODI after threatening to pull out. Then, in the middle of the fourth ODI, in the hill town of Dharamsala, the WICB informed the BCCI that it had decided to call off the remainder of tour after a "contracts fall" with players.

Big money was at stake but Bravo said the BCCI understood their problems.

"Yeah, they 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'," Bravo told 'i955fm'.

"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." 

"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'."

"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 said.

“But I was more concerned about the players’ future more than anything else, because it was a serious decision to not play and walk away from the tour. All of us could have been banned for life. So by taking the opportunity and listening to the bosses of BCCI, that was one way to ensure that we are protected,” he added.

I had to pay the most, says Bravo

“The only thing I would do differently is tape everyone. Record everyone who was in there,” Bravo said. 

“I’m the only player that really paid for what happened in India. The only one who never get the opportunity to play one-day cricket again. I made a stand, as the captain, as the leader of the team, for the best interest of my players, and by extension the players who have come and played for West Indies cricket. At the end of the day, it wasn’t fair on our bosses to send us on tour and cut the guys’ contract by 75 percent. It was just really unfair.”

West Indies beat India in the first ODI and lost the next game in Delhi. The third game in Vizag was cancelled due to a storm before the Windies travelled to the quaint hills of Dharamsala.