DOWLIN, Travis Montague
D.O.B: February 24, 1977 (Georgetown) Teams: Demerara, Guyana, West Indies Travis Dowlin is principally a right-handed middle-order batsman and make-shift opener who has so far been involved in 85 first-class games – six of them Test matches – in a career that began in Grenada in 1997 when he turned out for Guyana against the Windward Islands in the Busta Cup regional four-day competition.
He learnt his early trade at the Demerara Cricket Club and performed creditably in the national and regional youth tournaments and is currently a regular member of the Demerara and Guyana teams in all three versions of the game.
He has also been a member of several West Indies A teams that have pitted their skills against similar outfits from India, Bangladesh, South Africa, England and Zimbabwe and at one time was the captain of the regional side.
Dowlin’s early first-class and limited-overs West Indies tournaments brought him meagre returns for the first few years but his figures increased significantly in the 2001 season in both forms of the game.
In the Busta Cup competition he totalled 438 runs from eight matches at the commendable average of 48.66 runs per innings and in the process he struck an unbeaten 116 against the West Indies B in Port-of-Spain.
Later that year he averaged 32.66 runs per innings in five matches in the regional 50-overs contest and won the praises of top cricketing pundits over his technical correctness, calm approach and knowledge of the game.
Now closely monitored with an eye of being selected to the senior West Indies team, Dowlin did not handle the pressure well and coupled with a dramatic loss of form, he had an extremely poor season which set him back quite a few years.
In fact he could have mustered only 33 runs from five matches at the dismal average of 8.25 runs per innings in the four-day tournament and a poor 0.50 in two games in the limited overs engagements.
Notwithstanding the lean periods, he has played several useful hands for the national team and his performance was one of the pivots that inspired Guyana to the Stanford regional 20/20 title in 2006.
His hopes of playing international cricket were all but lost but for an opening that appeared when the cream of the West Indies team withdrew their services over a contractual dispute with the West Indies Cricket Board on the eve of Bangladesh’s visit to the Caribbean in 2009.
On his Test debut in St Vincent he faltered after good starts of 22 and 19 but constructed mature innings of 95 and 49 in the Grenada game although the visitors took the two-match duel 2-nil.
He was involved in all three matches of the One Day International series which followed and promptly produced an unbeaten even hundred in the second encounter which guaranteed him a trip to Australia at the end of the year even with the return of the striking players.
In-between the Bangladesh and Australia engagements the ‘second string’ regional side was part of the ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa in September, 2009 during which Dowlin was involved in three matches without distinguishing himself.
On the tour to Australia which followed he registered a fighting 62 and then four in the Brisbane Test and then returned to Perth as an opener because of injury to key players to churn out crafty scores of 55 and 22.
However, he had an extremely depressing limited-overs series totalling just 11 runs (1, 2, 0*, 8, 0) from five matches as he totally lost form, confidence and concentration.
These traits followed him to the Caribbean and after failures against South Africa in both Tests in Port-of-Spain (4 and 1) and in St Kitts (10) the selectors released him and looked elsewhere.
Dowlin continues to play for Guyana but his recent returns in all versions of the game are below expectations.
RECORDS:
TESTS 6: RUNS 343: AVG 31.18: HS 95 vs Bangladesh, Grenada, 2009
ODIs: 11 RUNS 228: AVG 25.33:         HS: 100* vs Bangladesh, Dominica, 2009
(Digicel: Guyana’s Bigger, Better Network)