Cricket West Indies has made every effort to ensure that former West Indies cricketers like Nicholas Pooran consider a comeback ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup 2026, to ensure that West Indies has the best team to play the marquee competition.
The ICC T20 World Cup is knocking at the door, and West Indies are without the best players and are busy finding the availability of their players for this prestigious tournament. The two-time T20 World Cup champions will be eager to return to the tournament.
The final squad for the tournament will be announced by the end of this month, and CWI will take the call after the end of the three-match series between West Indies and Afghanistan. Hence, he contacted his former cricketers and urged them to take back their retirement.
CWI approaches Nicholas Pooran for T20I comeback ahead of World Cup
CWI is clearly making a desperate attempt to field its best possible squad for next month’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. One of the key players contacted by CWI is their wicketkeeper batsman Nicholas Pooran, who announced his retirement last year.
However, despite all efforts on his part, CWI Director of Cricket, Miles Bascombe is not convinced that 30-year-old cricketer, Nicholas Pooran, is showing the intention to come out of his retirement to represent West Indies in the global showpiece.
Bascombe said, “What I can say is that we have made every effort to ensure that we have the best players we can to represent the West Indies.” He mentioned that all efforts till then had failed.
Speaking on WESN TV on Saturday, Bascombe said, “I can certainly say that we have investigated. Nicholas Pooran was fully aware that the World Cup was coming and his decision to retire must have been taken under that knowledge.”
CWI update on the status of Bravo, Pollard, Russell before T20 World Cup
CWI was then asked if they were considering approaching former West Indies T20 greats like Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard or Andre Russell and asked about their interest in being a part of the ICC tournament.
While Dwayne Bravo no longer plays T20 cricket to much extent, both Andre Russell and Kieron Pollard still continue to represent the franchise in leagues such as MLC, SA20 and ILT20. However, none of them will be seen in the IPL going forward.
“We have put in place thinkers,” says Bascombe. “We have asked questions about availability and so on, but as you can understand, the World Cup is very much involved in the IPL.” [Indian Premier League]So whoever comes on board as part of our team management will have to sacrifice a significant amount of time,” Bascombe said.
Bascombe further said that this clearly means that if these players travel to India to be part of the ICC T20 World Cup for the West Indies and then immediately start the IPL, they will have to stay away from home for a long time.
West Indies players have moved towards franchise cricket in the last decade
Over the past few years, or rather almost a decade, most of the West Indies cricketers have left international cricket and soon moved to franchise cricket, where they get immense opportunities and good money.
Players like Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo were among those who managed both international and franchise cricket at the same time; However, with the rise of several new franchise league tournaments, high-reputation players like Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Nicholas Pooran distanced themselves from international cricket to focus solely on franchise cricket.
Currently, players like Pollard and Nicholas Pooran feature in almost every T20 franchise league in the world, including SA20, ILT20, Vitality Blast, The Hundred and more. Pooran will star for LSG and Pollard will coach Mumbai Indians in IPL 2026.
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