DU­BA–Bowl­ing con­sul­tant Sir Curt­ly Am­brose be­lieves vet­er­an all-rounder Dwayne Bra­vo will be key to any suc­cess­ful West In­dies bid at the Twen­ty20 World Cup start­ing next week.Sir Curt­ly hailed the 32-year-old Trinida­di­an as a "su­per­star", point­ing out that his abil­i­ties in the game short­est for­mat were un­ri­valled.

"Dwayne Bra­vo is a pro in T20. There's no two ways about it," Sir Curt­ly said.

"He's a su­per­star. He un­der­stands T20 crick­et and he's go­ing to be an as­set for us in this World T20 tour­na­ment. There's re­al­ly noth­ing much I can say to him in terms of his bowl­ing be­cause he's just a pro, and he's one of the guys who's go­ing to lead the oth­er bowlers."

Bra­vo is the most ex­pe­ri­enced T20 play­er in the West In­dies squad with 285 games. He cam­paigns in all the ma­jor do­mes­tic leagues across the globe, and is one of the more skil­ful seam­ers in the T20 for­mat.He has al­ready proven his worth dur­ing the warm-up match­es here, with two-wick­et hauls in both warm-up games against Zim­bab­we and three wick­ets against Eng­lish Coun­ty War­wick­shire on Fri­day.

Sir Curt­ly said Bra­vo's ex­ten­sive knowl­edge of the T20 for­mat made him an in­valu­able as­set for West In­dies.

"He's so ex­pe­ri­enced and un­der­stands what to do in T20 crick­et so I'm go­ing to count on him to lead the oth­er bowlers along," he point­ed out.

"I am hap­py with the way he's bowl­ing and of course he's one of those guys that ... is a bit of a mo­ti­va­tor as well so he's go­ing to play a huge part in our suc­cess."

Sim­mons pulls out­of T20 squad

DUBAI–Bats­man Lendl Sim­mons has be­come the lat­est play­er to with­draw from the West In­dies squad for next week's Twen­ty20 World Cup in In­dia.The 31-year-old has failed to re­cov­er from a back in­jury and missed the on­go­ing prepa­ra­tion camp here. He will re­main in T&T to re­cu­per­ate.

West In­dies se­lec­tors are yet to name a re­place­ment.Sim­mons, one of the lead­ing Twen­ty20 open­ers, joins Kieron Pol­lard, Sunil Nar­ine and Dar­ren Bra­vo, who have all pulled out of the squad.

Pol­lard with­drew be­cause of in­jury, Nar­ine re­quest­ed more time to work on his ac­tion while Bra­vo opt­ed to play for Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force in the Re­gion­al four-day cham­pi­onship.

The con­stant with­drawals, cou­pled with the play­ers' re­cent con­tracts row with the West In­dies Crick­et Board, had made for a rocky build-up for the team for the March 8 to April 3 ICC tour­na­ment.

West In­dies play their fourth and fi­nal un­of­fi­cial warm-up against War­wick­shire on Sun­day be­fore fly­ing to Kolkata on Mon­day to com­plete their prepa­ra­tion with of­fi­cial warm-up Twen­ty20s against Aus­tralia and In­dia.

CMC