Arthur Crabtree wrote:Even if he gets one of the disciplines going at a time, then he's contributing to a side with few strengths. And cutting off his numbers at that point just feels unnecessary as he had some good scores before then. For me, eight games isn't a lot to go on.
Sure. I can agree with that to an extent. Though in all honesty I think he needs to be dropped so that he can work on his batting. If after a decade we could easily replay Lara's words and it
still applies to his batting then Bravo REALLY needs to sort it out. After all, if you have an allrounder who is now basically a bowler, but you still play him as an allrounder then your batting is actually now weaker than it
should be because you are in essence playing an extra bowler. In that case you can drop one of the main bowlers from the XI and play Bravo as an out-and-out bowler and bring in another batsman (like Bonner or Mohammed) OR you can drop the allrounder who isn't really an allrounder in favour of a batsman who will bring more runs that your crop of bowlers can defend.
And with Simmons in the side (he does bowl as well and hasn't bowled too badly in the past), it could easily go the way of just dropping Bravo, playing Simmons and bringing in an extra bat while playing the normal compliment of bowlers. Heck, if you dropped Bravo and Gayle and brought in someone like Deonarine, that brings in an extra spinner (Gayle supposedly bowls spin, but he's probably tossed more bowling balls than he has bowled cricket balls in recent times).
OR given that Rampaul can actually bat somewhat (at least no worse than Bravo when he isn't flashing in the pan), you could drop Bravo and Gayle and bring in Rampaul and Bonner/Mohammed and the team might actually perform better.
After Ramdin and Samuels were out of the team for extended periods (one was dropped, the other banned for talking to bookies), they both came back in hungry and did much better with the bat.
And by the way, eight games is plenty to go on. That's three more than most West Indian domestic players have in an entire year of List A cricket in the West Indies....if they can be expected to perform consistently over 5 games or risk not being selected next year for the next List A tournament.....then what's sauce for the goose should surely be sauce for the Bravo