Kraigg Brathwaite made his 86th consecutive appearance for the West Indies in Test cricket when he led his team in the first Test against Bangladesh, which began in Jamaica on Saturday. With that, he broke the record of the living legend Gary Sobers, coinciding with the occasion of Barbados’s Independence Day.
Sobers featured in 85 Tests on the trot to hold the record before that.
“It means a lot,” Brathwaite said about his achievement, as quoted by Windies Cricket on their website.
“I am extremely thankful because in this generation, there’s a lot of T10 and T20 cricket, but Test cricket is the real test. At the end, I will feel like I’ve done a really good job for the West Indies,” he added.
The opening day of the Test saw only 30 overs bowled because of rain and wet outfield. After winning the toss and opting to bat first, Bangladesh reached 69 for 2 at stumps.
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“My goal — I will never forget — was to play 100 Test matches,” Brathwaite, who made his Test debut in 2011, said. “Not just to play, but to earn 100 (Test) caps for the West Indies. That is what my life has been about. Test cricket is everything to me, and I can never be in this position without putting God first.”
He has so far scored 5769 runs in 183 innings across 95 Tests, including 12 hundreds and 30 fifties.
“You know, it’s just hard work,” he said. “Hard work over the years, knowing what to improve, identifying areas to work on when you get back home. To succeed at this level for a long time, only hard work and perseverance will get you through…To now be tying Sir Garfield Sobers’s record — that is what hard work does.”
Brathwaite also went on to pick the innings that he reckons is his best so far.
“The hundred I got against South Africa in 2014, when they were the world’s number one team — that was special. I was just 24 or 25 at the time. The hundred against Australia in 2022 was also amazing because they were number one then too. But if I had to choose, I’d say the Headingley hundred in 2017. We won that game after rebounding from a heavy defeat in the pink-ball Test. Beating England that day was special for us as West Indians,” he said.