Cricket West Indies (CWI) has given a new lease of life to the ODI careers of the Bravo brothers (Dwayne and Darren), Kieron Pollard and Sunil Narine. This was the result of talks between the players and Cricket West Indies (CWI) and makes it a distinct possibility of seeing them in the upcoming 2019 World Cup.
This hope became possible due to CWI moving its domestic Super50 Cup to October 2018 instead of Feb 2019. This means that the domestic competition will have the minimal clash with various domestic Twenty20 leagues Caribbean stars are such an integral part of.
"The overall message to Pollard, the Bravo brothers and Narine was 'come and play in the Super50 Cup', so that Courtney [Browne, chairman of selectors] and his selection panel will have all the players in system playing," Johnny Grave, board CEO, told ESPNCricinfo.
He added, "This will not only increase the standard and hopefully give the panel a headache but will help our selectors better gauge and assess our young players if they're scoring runs against Dwayne Bravo or Sunil in the final overs or getting Darren [Bravo] and Pollard out."
Courtney Browne told ESPNCricinfo, "It's a very important tournament for us in preparation for the World Cup. People that want to put their names in the hat for consideration would need to play Super50 and perform."
The rift in the relationship between the players and the board began with Narine, Bravo, and Pollard choosing PSL over helping West Indies qualify for the 2019 World Cup by playing in the qualifiers in Zimbabwe.
The trio then claimed that they were denied opportunity to help the West Indies by being ignored from the Hurricane Relief charity match against World XI at Lord’s.
This breakthrough of sorts continues Graves' policy of building bridges with disaffected players. Last year's amnesty resulted in Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels returning to the team, Andre Russell's recent selection into a West Indies squad, improved player contracts and now this olive branch.
"Jimmy Adams [director cricket operations] and I met with Dwayne, Darren, Pollard and Narine's agent in Trinidad," Grave said. "We met with them individually because they all have different circumstances. I would describe the meetings as positive, as everyone was looking to the future rather than the past. We talked through our entire schedule, not just now and to the 2019 World Cup, but also through all the matches and tours scheduled up to the World T20 in Australia 2020."
On the scheduling of Super50, Graves said, "We changed the contractual year to start July 1st so that the off-season would be April-June when we would do new contracts, appraisals and renewals, while players in the system can do their core conditioning work, as well as obviously have a break."
He added, "So now we start contracts in July and go almost straight into CPL. Hence in the review, it just made sense to continue with white-ball cricket by having the Super50 in November with October to prepare for the change in format. Only because we are hosting the ICC Women's World T20 in the Caribbean it meant moving the Super50 to October for this year."
