BCCI was very supportive during the contract fallout, reveals Dwayne Bravo

The Windies tour of India in 2014 was cut short mid-way due to the payments fallout between the West Indies Cricket Board and it’s Players’ Association. The tour started on on an uneasy note after the Windies players were assured by their board that their dues will be cleared but by the fourth ODI when the Windies board did not pay its players the players finally decided not to take part any further in the series. Now Dwayne Bravo has come out and stated that during all the controversy the BCCI was very helpful and supportive.

"Yeah, they understood, of course. Because they were very supportive of all of us. Actually, they even offered to pay us whatever we were losing. We were like, 'we don't want you to pay us. We need our board to sort out our contracts'," Bravo told 'i955fm'.

"The BCCI was very, very supportive and that is one of the reasons why most of us were still able to continue playing without any serious, serious problems taking place."

Bravo recently retired from the International cricket but he will continue to participate in various leagues all around the world. He also said that it was the support from the Indian cricket board and its president that made them play the first four ODI matches.

"I remember fully well before we said we weren't going to play the first game, 3am in the morning, I get a message from the BCCI boss, the old one, Mr (N) Srinivasan, that 'please take the field'. I listened to him - and woke up at 6 am to tell the team that we have to play. And everyone was against playing. Everyone thought that I panicked and chickened out and all these things," Bravo said.

The right hander has also said that they tried to sort out the matter with the Windies Cricket Board by reaching out to them but failed and thus had to take the extreme step of quitting the series. After the Windies team quit the series the lone T20 match and the three match Test series including one practice game was cancelled which led to heavy losses for the BCCI.

"But we did not just decide to walk away from the tour. There were different times when we tried to reach out to both our WIPA president (Wavell Hinds) and the cricket president (Dave Cameron, Cricket West Indies president). So we threatened (to pull out) from the first game, but we played. We threatened for the second game, but we played.

The payment problem between the Windies Cricket Board and its senior players has lingered around and as recently as in the series against India the Windies did not have many of its senior players in the team.