Through these ups and downs of Afghanistan’s journey in the last couple of World Cup matches, you might have seen one man walking silently around the field. That is Dwayne Bravo, the bowling coach who has made a huge difference to this team.
Captain Rashid Khan is a white-ball legend and he does not require much coaching. Yet it is their pace unit that has stood tall under duress in this world cup and there is some serious work behind it.
With 16 wickets left-arm pacer Fazhalhaq Farooqi still leads but it was medium-pacer Gulbadin Naib’s 4-20 against Australia in St Vincent that won them finally. In addition to that, Naveen-ul-Haq’s 4 for 26 including Taskin Ahmed and Mustafizur Rahman wickets at the death against Bangladesh had Bravo written all over it.
This was Bravo throughout his career since the mid-2000s—the subtle changes of pace, bluffing with a shorter ball before going full and wide yorkers.
Bravo had won so many games for West Indies; in fact, over the past two decades or so, this had become his pet project at Chennai Super Kings in IPL. The CSK fans can’t keep count on how many games they believe he alone won at death overs with his bag of tricks; and now having retired from IPL when he works for his franchise as same as he has been working with Afghan boys.”
What Bravo appears to have tried drilling into other members of this squad are West Indian conditions. There’s Jonathan Trott too though; head coach who understands this team deeply enough besides Bravo influence.
For teams like Afghanistan where bowlers sometimes don’t have experience enough to close out games, let alone win tight contests from trouble spots such as Mumbai at ODI World Cup caused by lack of experience which loses them 202/8 as Glenn Maxwell scores 201* on one knee.
“You need people who can remind you of what you have to do. They forget that in the heat of the moment, they might forget what was planned for a particular batsman and DJ is always there to tell them this is what we had planned and this is what we are doing,” says Rashid.
Afghanistan now play South Africa at Bravo’s home ground at Trinidad and Tobago in the semi-final. Bravo knows these conditions inside out.
