“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.