I’ve no intentions of not playing international cricket: Kieron Pollard

West Indies skipper Kieron Pollard denied the talks of his retirement after his team crashed out of the T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates. The defending champions did not have an ideal campaign, managing only a solitary victory in four games, while they play their final encounter against Australia on November 6.

After West Indies’ 20-run loss against Sri Lanka, T20 legend Dwayne Bravo announced that the upcoming game against Australia will be his last in the West Indies colors, which also led to speculations regarding Pollard’s future. However, the skipper clarified “there’s a lot of mileage in my legs”. Pollard has been far from his best in the tournament, having scored merely 46 runs in four innings at an uncharacteristic strike rate of 86.79.

“We can look at age, we can look at mobility; we can look at everything in a negative light or whatever. We have to face the fact that we weren’t good enough, so I’m not going to sit here and blame all those factors. We (will) sit back and have a post-mortem as to what actually went wrong. But you know, some of these guys in all honesty have still performed around the world, and yes, as I said, we were disappointed,” he said at the post-match conference.

Denying any plans of retirement, he said: “Unless you are part of the decision that is going to get rid of me or fire me or retire me, as I stand right now, I have no intentions of not playing international cricket. One tournament or a couple of bad games don’t make a summer. For me personally, there’s a lot of mileage in my legs other than an individual. There are people in the front scenarios who make decisions and I can’t, when it comes to that question, I can’t make that decision. On being asked what as per him were the reasons behind West Indies’ downfall in the tournament, Pollard admitted the side was not “smart enough”.

“We train hard. We put in the work. We have conversations, all right. But you still have to go out and perform. And we have not been good enough. And it’s as simple as that. As we say in the Caribbean, you can carry the horse to the river but you can’t force them to drink. When guys are batting out there, or myself is batting out there, it’s myself and my teammates against that white kookaburra, and we have not been able to come out of trouble and we have not been able or we have not been smart enough in the front scenarios, and that’s what it is.”