sussexpob wrote:bigfluffylemon wrote: And I know you're not a particular Stokes fan, but he's a fair sight better than Dwayne Bravo
Very different treatments, fitness and career paths in play. If you take Bravo forcing himself through his last year of test cricket out of the equation, in order to appease the Windies board who seemed to be gunning for him over his commitment to IPL, then youd find they achieved a similar level of performance in general.
Bravo didnt play a test after 25.
Having had a play around with the cricinfo 'explore performance', I'm not sure the numbers bear that out. Knock out Bravo's last 12 months or so, and his batting and bowling average improve by about a point each, but he's still 2-3 points shy of Stokes in both departments. And Stokes has more 100s, more 50s, more 5fers, a better bowling and batting strike rate and many more Man-of-the-Match performances (all of these stats are after correcting for differences in the number of matches played) than Bravo. By the numbers, the only metric that Bravo is ahead of Stokes on is bowling economy, and it's pretty marginal (3.35 for Stokes, 3.25 for Bravo).
Bravo could perhaps have been better if it hadn't been for the WI board sabotaging him and so many other WI players. But we'll never know.