‘Just wanted to bat out the day’ – Bravo

West Indies batsman Darren Bravo says he was less focused on playing for a win or a draw and more driven to stay at the crease, believing either result was possible as long as he kept batting. West Indies eventually fell short by 56 runs to Pakistan in the first Test at Dubai as Bravo was seventh man out after making 116 in a near seven-hour stay at the crease in pursuit of a target of 346.

Bravo faced 507 balls in the match, including 249 in the second innings on the way to scoring his eighth Test century to give hope that West Indies might make it out of the first Test without a loss and says his side did well to stay in the match after Pakistan’s imposing first innings total.

“It was a situation where I wanted to actually bat out the entire day,” Bravo said. “As long as I batted and spent a lot of time out in the middle, definitely going to frustrate the Pakistanis and start to dig in for us. I just wanted to bat and have a couple of partnerships and that would make it much easier.

“I think it was a very good batting wicket for the entire match but the thing was with the situation, if we had won the game today, we would have won the game in the last session or something like that so it was all about spending time in the middle and just waiting to launch in the end. Having said that, I think it was a tremendous effort. The guys really fought throughout the entire Test match even though the first two days in the entire Test match we were totally outplayed. The way Bishoo bowled put is in good stead to obviously come out on top.”

Bravo says he took a positive outlook to Azhar Ali’s triple-century in that it was still a good enough batting track where he …

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