Veteran West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo has rated the current squad of players as better overall than past T20 World Cup-winning teams.
Under the captaincy of Darren Sammy and with the likes of Chris Gayle, Marlon Samuels, Kieron Pollard, and Dwayne Smith the West Indies captured the world titles at the 2010 and 2016 editions. The current set-up, while having some of the same players who played in the previous edition, like Pollard and including Bravo, mostly consists of a new generation of West Indies talent.
Bravo, who was recently recalled to the team, admits that the most impressive aspect of the new guns is a deep and talented batting line-up, which interestingly is absent top T20 batsman Chris Gayle.
“In the last series in Sri Lanka, we had a team meeting, and coach Phil [Simmons] put the team down, the list, and he put it down in batting order, and he had my name down at No. 9," Bravo said in a recent interview with Espn.
"And I said to the guys, I said listen, I don't think I was ever involved in a T20 team when I am down to bat at No. 9,” he added.
"I'm just in awe of our batting line-up, and I said to the guys, I said listen, I think this team is actually better than our World-Cup-winning team, and that is no joke because at the end of the day, you have batting all the way down to No. 10.
"And imagine, Sunil Narine is not even in the team as yet. So just imagine, when Sunil comes into the team, Sunil will be batting at No. 10, or No. 11. He's an opening batsman now in T20.
"So just imagine a full-strength West Indies team, everyone is on deck. As a bowler, you get Evin Lewis out, [Shimron] Hetmyer comes in. You get Hetmyer out, [Nicholas] Pooran comes in, you get Lendl Simmons out, [Andre] Russell comes in, you get Russell out, [Kieron] Pollard comes in, you get Pollard out, Rovman Powell comes in, and it keeps going, going, and then you reach the champion DJ Bravo.”
The West Indies were in the middle of preparation for the next edition of the T20 World Cup before the coronavirus pandemic struck. The tournament was scheduled to take place from 18 October to 15 November 2020 but could yet be pushed back.