Vin­ode Mam­chan

Em­bat­tled left hand­ed bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo will not be lost to West In­dies crick­et, ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial of lo­cal crick­et club Queen's Park of which he's a mem­ber.

The left han­der has found him­self in hot wa­ter af­ter an ill-ad­vised tweet against pres­i­dent of the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), Dave Cameron on No­vem­ber 11. Since then he has been sent back home from Zim­bab­we and had his con­tract of­fer with­drawn.

Yes­ter­day, the son of san­ta Cruz met with pres­i­dent of Queen's Park CC?Deryck Mur­ray, a for­mer West In­dies leg­end and the club's 'Crick­et Cap­tain' Col­in Mur­ray, al­so for­mer na­tion­al crick­eter, among oth­er top of­fi­cials to dis­cuss the mat­ter. The Trinidad Guardian un­der­stands that the meet­ing was very fruit­ful and every­one left with the at­ti­tude that he will not be lost to West In­dies crick­et.

The Trinidad Guardian un­der­stands that the WICB is will­ing to work along­side Queen's Park in bring­ing the mat­ter to an am­i­ca­ble close, in or­der that the tal­ent­ed Bra­vo, who said his fo­cus is on Test crick­et, can con­tin­ue his ca­reer for the West In­dies.

A source close to the sit­u­a­tion said: "A ma­ture ap­proach will be tak­en to deal with this is­sue in or­der to make sure that the young man con­tin­ues to be a part of the sys­tem. He has many good years ahead of him to give to West In­dies crick­et and all will be done to make sure this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od that he's ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is passed over.

On Wednes­day, for­mer T&T open­ing bats­man Su­ruj Ra­goonath, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&TCB said that they have writ­ten the WICB on the mat­ter and would dis­logue be­tween both par­ties.

How­ev­er, Ra­goonath point­ed out that Bar­vo does not seem in­ter­est­ed in such a meet­ing as he in­di­cat­ed that he will be guid­ed by his le­gal team.

Bra­vo, 27, ref­ered to Cameron as 'big id­iot' in his tweet, while ex­plain­ing that he was nev­er of­fered an 'A' Con­tract by the WICB as was ref­er­enced by the WICB pres­i­dent dur­ing an in­ter­view on Sports Max, a few days ear­li­er. Bra­vo re­act­ed an­gri­ly on twit­ter af­ter be­ing of­fered a 'C' Con­tract by the WICB for the next year. He re­fused to take the con­tract val­ued at US$100,000, be­ing the pre­mier bats­man on the team.

Af­ter his tweet he was called be­fore the on tour man­age­ment com­mit­tee of man­ag­er Joel Gar­ner and coach­es Rod­dy Es­t­wick and Hen­der­son Springer. His match/tour con­tract was sus­pend­ed and he was sent home from Zim­bab­we, where the West In­dies is cur­rent­ly tak­ing part in a tri-se­ries, al­so in­volv­ing Sri Lan­ka. He was al­so giv­en a dead­line of 4pm last Sat­ur­day to take down the tweet and apol­o­gise for his ac­tions but he did not ac­cede to the de­mand and now faces fur­ther sanc­tions by the WICB.