Dwayne Bravo on the family culture in CSK

Dwayne Bravo has been an integral part of the CSK unit ever since he moved away from MI. MS Dhoni has entrusted Bravo with the death overs, a trade that Bravo has flourished in, thanks to those dipping slower ones.

During this season’s auction it felt like CSK might opt out of buying Bravo, as the West Indian hadn’t been in great form in franchise cricket in the past 12 months.

However, MS Dhoni had already identified his core group of players, and Bravo was one of them.

Dhoni had very shrewdly recruited all those players who were good enough on the field and slotted into that CSK dressing room culture seamlessly. Fleming and Dhoni both had stressed about the importance of having a good dressing room culture in order to breed champions.

And because CSK’s dressing room was in order and everyone knew who was in charge of what, their IPL campaign was only about the cricket.

Dwayne Bravo was extremely thankful for how things were at CSK and opened up on his relationship with Dhoni, Raina and the others.

He emphasised on the fact that they all referred to each other as brothers and that Bravo called Dhoni’s wife Sakshi as his ‘sister’.

“I am close to a lot of players like Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni. We call each other ‘brother’. His [Dhoni’s] wife Sakshi and I also call each other brother and sister,” Bravo said.

Bravo came up with a couple of match winning performances to help CSK in their pursuit of that IPL 2018 title, one that almost no one expected them to win.

However, MS Dhoni’s sublime captaincy skills and the big match temperament of the CSK players meant that CSK were in fact able to beat the odds and win IPL 2018 in emphatic fashion.