Dwayne Bravo vs. Keemo Paul

Adams justifies Bravo's WI T20 pick

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Di­rec­tor of Crick­et Jim­my Adams has jus­ti­fied the se­lec­tion of Trinida­di­an Dwayne Bra­vo on the West In­dies’ team to face Ire­land in the up­com­ing three-match T20 se­ries against Ire­land.

Bra­vo was named on the team af­ter an ab­sence of four years and will take the field on Thurs­day against the Irish at the Grena­da Na­tion­al Sta­di­um. He last played for the West In­dies T20 unit in No­vem­ber 2016 against Pak­istan in Abu Dhabi, Sau­di Ara­bia.

Asked the se­lec­tors’ jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for his pick giv­en he has not played se­ri­ous com­pet­i­tive T20 crick­et since he was in­jured out of last year’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), Adams said the se­lec­tion of the best T20 World Cup squad may have forced their hand.

“He would have been in­jured dur­ing the last CPL and we are cog­nizant of that. See­ing that there is no re­gion­al T20 tour­na­ment be­tween now and when a team for a po­ten­tial World Cup can be se­lect­ed, he has been draft­ed in against Ire­land,” Adams told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day.

“In my dis­cus­sion with the se­lec­tors, they were keen on Dwayne play­ing some T20 crick­et not just at club lev­el, which he can do in var­i­ous leagues, but they want­ed to see why he is at in terms of in­ter­na­tion­al readi­ness.”