ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low has re­vealed that Test cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite ini­tial­ly want­ed to re­sign fol­low­ing the team’s de­feat to Pak­istan in the first Test in Mul­tan back in Jan­u­ary, but he ad­vised him not to.

Speak­ing dur­ing CWI’s quar­ter­ly press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Dr Shal­low said Brath­waite’s de­ci­sion had not been made in haste and had been dis­cussed with both him and new Test head coach Daren Sam­my.

He made the com­ments fol­low­ing the ear­li­er an­nounce­ment that the 32-year-old Brath­waite had re­signed as cap­tain af­ter be­ing at the helm for four years.

“Kraigg is a phe­nom­e­nal in­di­vid­ual, an ex­em­plary cap­tain and an in­spi­ra­tional leader in every right.

“Dur­ing the Pak­istan tour af­ter the first match, Kraigg ac­tu­al­ly reached out to me as pres­i­dent sug­gest­ing that he was go­ing to an­nounce his res­ig­na­tion pret­ty much on that tour,” Dr Shal­low dis­closed.

“This was be­fore the sec­ond Test, so I told him it may not be the most op­por­tune time to an­nounce it, and he ex­plained to me the rea­sons why he want­ed to move on from the cap­tain­cy then.

“He ex­plained that it was a case where he en­joys the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, but he be­lieves he could give the team more if he just fo­cused on his bat­ting,” he added.

How­ev­er, Dr Shal­low said he man­aged to per­suade Brath­waite to post­pone his res­ig­na­tion un­til af­ter the com­ple­tion of the two-match Test se­ries.

West In­dies went on to win the sec­ond Test match to record their first Test vic­to­ry on Pak­istan soil in 34 years and tie the se­ries 1-1.

“I man­aged to con­vince him not to an­nounce his res­ig­na­tion at that par­tic­u­lar point, but we’ll dis­cuss a bet­ter time, a more ap­pro­pri­ate time for him and the or­gan­i­sa­tion, as well as the new head coach of the Test team to make that an­nounce­ment and he agreed to post­pone the an­nounce­ment, so, I want to thank Kraigg pro­found­ly for be­ing the true leader that he re­al­ly is,” Dr Shal­low said.

“He has said to me that he is ful­ly com­mit­ted to play­ing for West In­dies and that he has a few more years in his tank, so I was quite hap­py to hear that.

“I’m cer­tain that be­ing on­ly two Test match­es shy of 100 Tests, I sus­pect the se­lec­tors may give him that chance…and when­ev­er he does achieve that, Crick­et West In­dies will be right there cel­e­brat­ing with him,” he fur­ther added.

CMC