Sean Nero

Hum­bled! That's how West In­dies and T&T left-hand­ed bats­man and right-arm fast bowler Dar­ren Michael Bra­vo has re­spond­ed to the T&T Crick­et (TTCB) de­ci­sion to name him as its In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­eter of the Year 2015.

The an­nounce­ment was made at the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion's (NSO) 59th an­nu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of awards held at the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) in Cou­va, held on Oc­to­ber 24.

In a T&T Guardian in­ter­view, he said, "Be­ing vot­ed as the TTCB In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­eter of The Year was def­i­nite­ly a great feel­ing. I was a bit sur­prised be­cause I wasn't aware or no­ti­fied by the TTCB that I was, but hav­ing said that I'm very hum­bled by this. And, hav­ing re­ceived this award, it will have a spe­cial place in my heart. I will al­so like to con­grat­u­late my oth­er team­mates who were in con­tention for this award as well. This was the sec­ond time I've won this award.

"When I look in the mir­ror I see a man. I've ma­tured a lot over the past few years. I had my ups and downs, but I nev­er gave up. Ob­vi­ous­ly on the field of play, I think it's my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to car­ry the bat­ting of the West In­dies and I'm look­ing for­ward to the chal­lenge. Off the field, I just want to con­tin­ue en­joy­ing my life as much as pos­si­ble. There are a few ini­tia­tives that I'm part of, so that keeps me busy off the field. So phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly I'm in a good place so it's just a mat­ter of me mov­ing from strength to strength."

Don't aban­don Red Force

Tack­ling the is­sue of T&T Red Force's fail­ing at re­gion­al tour­na­ments, he said, per­son­al­ly it was "very im­por­tant" for him to con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly when avail­able to play for the team.

"I be­lieve as a team most of our best play­ers are al­ways away on in­ter­na­tion­al du­ties, so there­fore that tends to ham­per our chances of claim­ing the four-day ti­tle. But at the end of the day, even though you may not win the ti­tle, you are pro­duc­ing world class play­ers like (Sunil) Nar­ine (Kieron) Pol­lard or (Dwayne) Bra­vo and every team around the world is seek­ing your ser­vices. That in it­self is a vic­to­ry for us as a coun­try.

"Hav­ing said that we need to work on our con­cen­tra­tion a lot more and as bats­men we need to con­vert starts in­to big­ger scores. I be­lieve our bowl­ing over the past few years was very good, so if our bat­ting come to the par­ty then I be­lieve we have a very good chance," he said.

Is young T&T, WI crick­eters men­tal­ly weak?

While he de­clined com­ment on the Caribbean sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty's per­ceived bias in the re­peat­ed non-se­lec­tion of top T&T crick­eters Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard for du­ty by the WICB's pan­el of se­lec­tors, Bra­vo was, how­ev­er, armed with a re­sponse when it came to de­bunk­ing crit­i­cisms lev­eled against young T&T and West In­dies play­ers.

Some ad­min­is­tra­tors have deemed them as men­tal­ly weak de­spite their in­nate tal­ent, a de­vel­op­ment which was be­lieved to be af­fect­ing their lev­el of con­sis­ten­cy on the pitch.

For ath­letes to im­prove their game, he said, ad­min­is­tra­tors of the sport need­ed to put the right in­gre­di­ents in place. Bra­vo be­lieved once that was done, the lev­el of the crick­eters and crick­et would im­prove.

"I be­lieve in the Caribbean, we have some of the most tal­ent­ed crick­eters in the world, but it takes a lot more than that to be suc­cess­ful at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Hard work and ded­i­ca­tion are very im­por­tant. So as a play­er you have to go the ex­tra the mile, if you re­al­ly want to achieve your goals. But there must be a prop­er re­la­tion­ship with both par­ties. It will cer­tain­ly help," he said.

On be­ing a role mod­el

He had no qualms that while carv­ing out a suc­cess­ful pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer, so far, he was able to achieve role mod­el sta­tus. Bra­vo be­lieved it was very im­por­tant that he por­trayed a very pos­i­tive at­ti­tude both on and off the field what­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion. In his es­ti­ma­tion, a good role mod­el made the chil­dren whom be­lieved in them knows they could do any­thing, if they sim­ply put their minds to it. And as fate would have it that was a char­ac­ter­is­tic he tried to in­still in the minds of youths with whom he came in­to con­tact.

Ex­press­ing his views on the state of sports in T&T, he said, "I be­lieve that there's more than enough tal­ent in every sport­ing dis­ci­pline in T&T. What we do with the tal­ent is very crit­i­cal.

If we can be there for our sports­men and women every step of the way, we can bring a lot more joy and hap­pi­ness to our beloved coun­try. Im­prov­ing the fa­cil­i­ties to top class stan­dard is some­thing we need to get right. So there­fore, when­ev­er we go in­to events or tour­na­ments we won't be a step be­hind oth­er coun­tries. So if we get those sim­ple things right, every­thing else will fall in­to place."

Con­trary to pub­lic opin­ion Bra­vo made it clear he was not strug­gling to get out of the shad­ows of for­mer WI crick­eter Bri­an Lara and his broth­er (Dwayne), since no shad­ows ex­ist­ed.

In fact, the younger Bra­vo cher­ished the fact both were very close to him and were al­ways avail­able to share ad­vice and lend sup­port, and for that he was eter­nal­ly grate­ful.

Field­ing ques­tions about start­ing a fam­i­ly and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of di­rect­ing his chil­dren to fol­low in his sport­ing foot­steps, Bra­vo said based on his per­son­al­i­ty, when that time came, he would al­low his off­springs to choose, and would sup­port them un­con­di­tion­al­ly.

"Crick­et is not an easy sport so there­fore, I won't ever want to put pres­sure on them to do some­thing that they don't want to do. But I have time on my hands. So we will see how that goes," he said laugh­ing.