West Indies beg Nicholas Pooran to make shock retirement U-turn for T20 World Cup 2026

Cricket West Indies has made all the efforts they could to ensure that former Windies cricketers like Nicholas Pooran consider making a comeback ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup 2026, to ensure West Indies have the best squad playing the marquee competition.

The ICC T20 World Cup is knocking at the door, and the West Indies do not have the finest of players in the hut and are busy seeking the availability of their players for the marquee tournament. The two-time T20 World Cup champions would be looking forward to making a bounce back in the tournament.

The final squad for the tournament will be announced by the end of this month, and CWI will make the calls following the end of the three-match series between West Indies and Afghanistan. They have, hence, approached their former cricketers and urged them to reverse their retirement.

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CWI approaches Nicholas Pooran for T20I comeback ahead of World Cup

The CWI has clearly been making desperate attempts to assemble their best possible team for next month's ICC Men's T20 World Cup. One of the major players whom the CWI has approached is their wicket-keeper batter Nicholas Pooran, who announced his retirement last year.

However, despite having made all efforts from their end, the CWI director of cricket, Miles Bascombe, does not seem convinced that the 30-year-old cricketer, Nicholas Pooran, is showing an intent to come out of his retirement and represent the West Indies in the global showpiece.

“What I can say is that we have made every effort to ensure that we can have the best players represent the West Indies," said Bascombe, as he mentioned that all efforts until then were unsuccessful.

“I could definitely say that we have probed. Nicholas 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.

CWI updates on Bravo, Pollard, Russell status ahead of T20 World Cup

The CWI was then asked if they were considering approaching former West Indies T20 legends like Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, or Andre Russell for the same and seeking their interest to be part of the ICC tournament.

While Dwayne Bravo does not play T20 cricket to a great extent any further, both Andre Russell and Kieron Pollard still continue to represent franchises in leagues like the MLC, SA20, and the ILT20 as well. However, none of them would be seen any further in the IPL.

“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," Bascombe added.

Bascombe further continued that this clearly means if these players travel to be a part of the ICC T20 World Cup for the West Indies in India and then immediately start with the IPL, then they would have to stay away from home for a long time.

West Indies players have moved to franchise cricket over the past decade

Over the past few years, or rather nearly a decade, West Indian cricketers have mostly given up on international cricket and have soon moved to franchise cricket, where they get immense opportunities and a handsome amount of money.

The likes of Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, and Dwayne Bravo were among players who managed both international and franchise cricket at the same time; however, with the rise of several new franchise league tournaments, players with a high reputation, like Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, and Nicholas Pooran sidelined themselves from international cricket to focus only on franchise cricket.

Currently, players like Pollard and Nicholas Pooran feature in almost every T20 franchise league in the world, including the SA20, ILT20, Vitality Blast, The Hundred, and more. Pooran will star for LSG, and Pollard will coach the Mumbai Indians in IPL 2026.

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