Cherisse Moe

Dwayne Bra­vo says his ul­ti­mate goal is to have a suc­cess­ful crick­et ca­reer; crick­et en­thu­si­asts will ar­gue that he's al­ready ac­com­plished that aim. On­ly last week, the all-rounder shot in­to the spot­light again when he cre­at­ed his­to­ry by be­com­ing the first crick­eter in the world to be nom­i­nat­ed for the pres­ti­gious ES­PY sport awards.

He earned the nom­i­na­tion in the Best Play cat­e­go­ry for his spec­tac­u­lar one-hand catch dur­ing a match in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL). And last month, Bra­vo had rea­son to cel­e­brate when he copped the Pur­ple Cap for tak­ing the most wick­ets (26) in the IPL. Bra­vo's 2013 record of 32 wick­ets re­mains un­bro­ken. So, we can safe­ly move on to goal num­ber two–and that is to take his mu­sic more se­ri­ous­ly and launch it on the world's stage.

The for­mer West In­dies cap­tain is wast­ing no time on that mis­sion.

On June 11, he flew out to Los An­ge­les to meet with top pro­duc­ers and mu­sic ex­ec­u­tives to ex­plore av­enues to take his mu­sic to the next lev­el.

"I al­ways loved mu­sic but it was some­thing I did as a hob­by, now I do gigs in LA and Flori­da. I nev­er saw my­self reach­ing those places through mu­sic. I al­ways thought crick­et would take me there," Bra­vo shares in a re­cent in­ter­view at his Mar­aval home.

Bra­vo, or DJ Bra­vo as he dubs him­self, says while he knows his mu­sic is not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly in Trinidad, it is well-re­ceived out­side of the coun­try. His lat­est track, Cha­lo Cha­lo, a catchy chut­ney tune fea­tur­ing Kar­ma's Nisha B, be­came an in­stant hit in In­dia–where Bra­vo has le­gions of loy­al fans.

The song, which he ded­i­cat­ed to his sup­port­ers there, is al­so avail­able on iTunes. With a few oth­er tracks al­ready un­der his belt in­clud­ing Go Gyal Go and Bee­nie Man and Bra­vo, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with his long-time friend, Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Bee­nie Man–Bra­vo be­lieves that tak­ing his mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly is on­ly the start of big­ger and bet­ter things to come.

"I know peo­ple don't take me on lo­cal­ly and that's okay. My fo­cus with mu­sic is out­side of Trinidad. I plan to re­lease more tracks for the Asian mar­ket be­cause they re­al­ly em­brace my sound. It's great to know I'm loved around the world."

And that love runs deep. Bra­vo is of­ten mobbed by hun­dreds of crick­et lovers for self­ies and au­to­graphs when­ev­er he trav­els to coun­tries like In­dia and Bangladesh. The right-hand­ed bats­man says when he fi­nal­ly puts down his bat, he al­so plans to open a mu­sic stu­dio to help oth­er artistes re­alise their dreams.

"Do­ing mu­sic is very ex­pen­sive and at home there aren't many places to have your songs pro­fes­sion­al­ly done at af­ford­able prices. If you don't know the mu­sic busi­ness you can get ripped off," he ex­plains.

"I want to give up­com­ing artistes the chance to fol­low their dreams. This is some­thing on my agen­da when I re­tire."

How­ev­er, this by no means sig­ni­fies that Bra­vo is ready to re­tire from crick­et–far from it. The fa­ther of two, who thrills fans with his cel­e­bra­to­ry dance moves on the pitch, as­sures that he will con­tin­ue to play the game un­til he can no longer do so.

Bra­vo's pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer spans well over a decade. He says he has ex­pe­ri­enced both highs and lows but ad­mits that be­ing dropped from the West In­dies' World Cup squad was es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult. Just weeks af­ter be­ing dropped, Bra­vo al­so called it quits from Test Crick­et. He played his last Test match against Sri Lan­ka in 2010.

"I felt re­al­ly hurt about be­ing dropped. It wasn't a good feel­ing at all," he says.

But the Chen­nai Su­per Kings crick­eter bats on. Re­flect­ing on his jour­ney, he says he has come a long way from his days as a youth at the Queen's Park Coach­ing Clin­ic.

"I re­mem­ber my par­ents couldn't af­ford to send me to the clin­ic but coach Charles Guillen said he will take care of it. I'll al­ways be thank­ful to him and Richard Smith for giv­ing me a chance and en­cour­ag­ing me to ex­cel," he says.

Bra­vo at­trib­ut­es his hu­mil­i­ty to his "hum­ble be­gin­nings" and close-knit fam­i­ly. "My fam­i­ly wasn't poor but we weren't rich. My dad did his best to make sure his kids had enough. Mon­ey hasn't changed me and it nev­er will."

One oth­er thing that hasn't changed is Bra­vo's love for par­ty­ing and hav­ing a good time. When­ev­er he's in Trinidad you can ex­pect to see him at pop­u­lar night­clubs like 51 De­grees–but don't ex­pect him to get too "turned up" or car­ried away, though.

Bra­vo is al­ways the des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver as he does not drink al­co­hol or smoke.

"I just nev­er saw the sense in smok­ing or drink­ing. When­ev­er I par­ty, I drink or­ange juice or co­conut wa­ter. Peo­ple nev­er be­lieve me but it's true," he says.