‘There are times when you go to the airport and your ticket is not there. Then we call (Dinanath) Ramnarine (head of the players’ union) and he will buy a ticket’
PORT OF SPAIN, (Reuters) – West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, one of the players boycotting the current test with Bangladesh, has described the West Indies Cricket Board as being less organised than his local club team.
In an interview with the Trinidad and Tobago Express on Sunday, Bravo expressed his disillusionment with the administration of the game in the Caribbean noting kits arrived late for tournaments and players often found themselves at airports without tickets.
“They just do things badly. They send guys on tour two days before a series and stuff like your uniform arriving late. No one can actually believe how – the West Indies is the biggest, you can’t go bigger than that in the region but my club, Queen’s Park Cricket Club, is more organised than West Indies,” he said.
“There are times when you go to the airport and your ticket is not there. Then we call (Dinanath) Ramnarine (head of the players’ union) and he will buy a ticket.
“Sometimes you come back from tour – every time we travel we land in Barbados to get a connecting flight. The players go to the desk, no tickets there. You call Ramnarine. That’s what I’m talking about, the unprofessionalism,” he said.
The West Indies Cricket Board was not immediately available for comment yesterday.
Bravo said that when he was out injured for eight months last year he had to arrange for and pay for medical treatment.
“They got my surgery done for me. They paid for the flights and that was it. From the time I got back home my whole rehab programme was on my own, everything.
Bravo, who did not take part in the May tour of England but played in the lucrative Indian Premier League Twenty20 tournament, said he was saddened by finding himself on strike but said it was a matter of standing up for his rights.
“Basically you’re left to do a lot for yourself. They keep saying you’re a professional unit but do we get treated like a professional team? I don’t think so. A lot of the players feel the same way,” he said.
The flamboyant middle-order batsman and lively fast-medium bowler said that players who fell out of the test side were being ignored by the board.
“They come on the scene, show a lot of promise, get an injury or get dropped, no one has done anything to help them recover from their injury or get back in the game,” he said.
The Trinidadian said that the players were tired of seeing the differences between how they are treated and the situation of their opponents.
“We reach a stage in life now where we travel the world and seen how things are set up in different countries and you ask yourself, ‘Why? Why not back home by us?” he said.
