‘I fell out of love with the game’ - Carlos Brathwaite recalls time after 2016 heroics

‘Carlos Brathwaite - Remember the Name’ incident was expected to change his career and make him the next superstar in West Indies cricket if not in the entire sport. However, nothing went according to plan as Braithwaite found himself in a dark place, away from the game, just two years after the 2016 T20 World Cup final heroics against Ben Stokes at Eden Gardens, Kolkata.

Recalling the time, the cricketer-turned-commentator mentioned that he fell out of love with the game in 2018 but it never accelerated to the point of announcing his retirement from the game. Brathwaite recalled talking to a sports psychologist, who made him remember the reason he started playing cricket in the first place. 

“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 told Yahoo Sports.

“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. I said I want to play for Barbados, captain Barbados, play for West Indies, captain West Indies and win a World Cup,” he added. 

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Brathwaite achieved all his goals at a very early age, which played a role in him falling out of love with the game. The 35-year-old explained that every cricketer dreams of achieving something extraordinary and it usually happens at the end of one’s career. However, Brathwaite found success early and after knowing that he wouldn’t be able to achieve something at the same level, his soul started something new.

“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. 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,” Brathwaite said.