CWI makes appeal to Pooran for T20 World Cup

ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) — In an effort to assemble their best-possible team for next month’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Cricket West Indies (CWI) have reached out to Nicholas Pooran to find out whether he is interested in making a comeback.

However Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe says it does not appear as though the 29-year-old Twenty20 (T20) star is contemplating coming out of retirement to take part in the global showpiece.

Pooran shocked the world when he announced his retirement from international cricket last June, and has since been plying his trade in the various T20 franchises across the globe.

With CWI set to name their World Cup squad following the completion of their upcoming three-match T20I series against Afghanistan later this month, Bascombe says moves had been made to contact Pooran.

He says those efforts had been unsuccessful to date.

“What I can say is that we have made every effort to ensure that we can have the best players represent the West Indies…

“I could definitely say that we have probed. Pooran was quite aware that the World Cup was upcoming, and his decision to retire would have been with that knowledge,” Bascombe said while speaking on WESN TV on Saturday.

“So, we probed and we saw that he mentioned not too long ago that he was quite happy to stick to his decision, so I could say that we probed.”

When asked if CWI had enquired whether West Indies legends Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard or Andre Russell were interested in being part of the team’s management unit for the World Cup, Bascombe said they had.

He says a packed schedule was one of the reasons they had been given for not being able to make such a commitment.

“We have put out feelers,” Bascombe says. “We’ve asked questions about availability, et cetera but, as you can understand, the World Cup pretty much flows into the IPL [Indian Premier League], so anyone who would come on board as part of our team management would pretty much have to sacrifice a lot of time away.

“We’ve probed, and some of the feedback we’ve gotten is that it would mean that they would have to spend an extended time away…and if they go to the World Cup it would mean that they would have to spend quite a lot of time away from home because they will be at the World Cup and then going to the IPL.”