“Will 2016 be the sole focus of the piece?” comes the text back. That’s after a couple of friendly nudges and even more days of SMS silence. Carlos Brathwaite doesn’t really want to talk about his T20 World Cup-winning exploits at Kolkata in 2016. Three more pixellated dots unfurl on the phone screen … here we go. That drawing board is getting a revisit any second now. “Sorry, I don’t just want to regurgitate the same story.”
Fair enough. With the latest T20 World Cup reaching the business end in the Caribbean, the footage of a 27-year-old Brathwaite peppering the Eden Gardens stands with four consecutive sixes in the final over while the bowler – a body-buckled Ben Stokes – looks on in pained disbelief, will do the rounds once more.
Repeat viewing makes that final over no less visceral for the spectator, David Lloyd and ultimately Ian Bishop’s commentary call capturing the moment indelibly. All together now: “Carlos Brathwaite … CARLOS BRATHWAITE! REMEMBER THE NAME!” But, actually, maybe the man himself would rather you didn’t. Not just for that one night anyway.
Brathwaite calls a couple of mornings after West Indies have been knocked out at the hands of South Africa. He’s back in Barbados working on the tournament as a commentator which he is juggling – “It’s about 50-50 nowadays” – with having a young family and still playing franchise cricket around the world. He’s just dropped his daughter off at the local pool for a morning lesson, shrieks and splashes soundtracking the conversation.
Any fears of prickliness are quickly abated. Brathwaite is friendly and quick to laugh. He’s in thoughtful mood too, allowing for an opportunity to lasso the elephant on the phone line. I’m curious to know why he seemed particularly keen not to revisit 2016? After all, it was a moment of success that would change his life for ever, bringing him a certain fame and the opportunity to reap the rewards of being an in-demand player on the lucrative franchise circuit.
“The thing is, I went through a bit of a rough patch around 2018,” he says. “I fell out of love with the game. It never quite got to the point where I wanted to call it quits but I needed to reset.”
Brathwaite’s post-2016 career, somewhat understandably, hasn’t reached the same heights. Hugely talented with bat and ball (it’s little remembered that he took three for 23 on that pulsating night, removing both Jos Buttler and Joe Root when they were well set), he explains how difficult he found it to grapple with the achievement and his future ambitions.
“I remember talking to a sports psychologist a while afterwards and he said: ‘What are your goals?’ It took me back to when I was a young boy and my mum asked me the same question.” Young Carlos reeled off a seemingly improbable list. “I said I want to play for Barbados, captain Barbados, play for West Indies, captain West Indies and win a World Cup.”
Brathwaite, 28, was listless. He had ticked off everything he wanted to do in the game and it had left him feeling adrift. “I wasn’t enjoying cricket. In fact, the total opposite. Just looking at a bat or a ball would make me sad. I didn’t know what path I was on at all.”
Success can spur those who taste it onwards, relentless in pursuit, unquenchable in desire. Failure can do the same. Stokes’s journey hasn’t been a smooth one since he was left disconsolately pawing at the Eden Gardens turf but he channelled the pain, putting it to good use in the clutch scenarios he has been involved in since.
Ahead of England’s T20 World Cup victory in 2022, Stokes admitted that the 2016 final had been on his mind. “You learn from stuff like that and use it as motivation,” he said. He scored a nerveless and match-winning 52 not out to see England clinch the trophy, the pain of 2016 having spurred him on to get better: “I never let that kind of stuff eat me up.”
Conversely, Brathwaite was swallowed up by his success. The 2016 tournament was the first major International Cricket Council event produced by ICC TV. The governing body boasted afterwards that their social media output during the tournament had “320 million views and made 5.75 billion impressions”. Take a pinch of salt with these cortex-frying numbers, but it seems true enough that as the game became increasingly “clipped up” and shared as seconds-long content, Brathwaite’s sixes in Kolkata were the lodestars.
“A lot of people play sport in pursuit of making that one amazing thing happen. Mine came closer to the beginning of my career than the end,” he says. “I had to come to terms with the fact that I was never going to do anything on the same scale, on that same global stage.”
Some time spent away from anything to do with cricket and “plenty of soul searching” saw the joy of playing eventually return. Brathwaite mentions that he has also found solace in both commentating – in which he is proving himself to be an astute and articulate reader of the game – and also mentoring younger players.
“I never had that person that I could go to for advice. I do really take satisfaction in imparting whatever knowledge I have of the game and some of the experiences I’ve been through. It feels good to give back.”
He’s made his peace with what happened that night in Kolkata then? “I definitely used to think it was a curse rather than a blessing. I think Bish [Ian Bishop] sometimes wishes he never said that line either, it follows him around too.”
A lifeguard’s whistle peeps in the background. “While you are still working you always want your current thing to be appreciated, but I’ve made my peace with it and see how privileged I am to have it. I got my moment. It happened for me. It doesn’t for a lot of people. Their search goes on.”
A small voice interrupts. Time to get back to the juggle. “You know, my daughter is called Eden. She’s named after what happened that night,” Brathwaite says. “One day, when she’s a bit older, it’ll be cool to show her what Daddy did.”
This is an extract from the Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
