Former West Indies captain and current head coach Darren Sammy has expressed deep concern over Nicholas Pooran's sudden retirement from international cricket. Sammy believes that this incident highlights a major challenge facing West Indies cricket. In the last few weeks, many star players have announced their retirement. The latest name in this is West Indies' explosive batsman Nicholas Pooran. Nicholas Pooran surprised everyone by quitting international cricket at the age of just 29. West Indies head coach Darren Sammy believes that Nicholas Pooran's sudden retirement from international cricket underlines the growing challenge of keeping players motivated to represent their national teams and warned that more players could do so.

Nicholas Pooran announced his retirement from international cricket on Monday at the age of 29, just eight months before the T20 World Cup. The aggressive wicketkeeper-batsman is not only West Indies' most successful batsman in T20 international cricket but is also a very popular player in franchise cricket. After West Indies' sixth consecutive defeat in the limited overs format on the England tour, 'ESPNcricinfo' quoted Sammy as saying, 'My inner voice was telling me that something like this would happen.'

Darren Sammy said that he had started planning without Pooran after earlier talks with this cricketer and his agent. Sammy said, 'Ideally I would like to keep such talent in the team. But I cannot control anyone's career. I wished him all the best, and he wished the team all the best. Now efforts are being made to move forward on the strategy without Nicholas Pooran. The World Cup is coming up, I respect the fact that he told us well in advance so that we have more time to plan without him.'

'I'm sure more players will move in that direction'

Sammy, who led West Indies to the T20 World Cup title twice in 2012 and 2016, pointed to the widespread trend of early retirement in modern cricket and warned that more players could follow Pooran's path. Sammy said, 'I'm sure more players will move in that direction. Now T20 cricket is like this especially with the challenges we face due to being associated with the West Indies, trying to motivate our players to play at the top, so I won't be surprised.'

'It's out of our control'

Sammy said, 'You saw that everyone is talking about Heinrich Klaasen, Quinton de Kock, these players. Who has retired? It's out of our control.'

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