The West Indies cricket board might suffer another blow as their most experienced player Marlon Samuels is considering retirement from the longest format of the game due to low payments made by the board to the players. One of the major reasons which are persuading Samuels to take this decision is that the other West Indies players like Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard are earning big bucks by participating in T20 league played in different countries.
Samuels too is a handy T20 player and he thinks that it is his time to get his dues. The teams will be tempted to add him to their squads as Samuels is a force behind his team in winning two T20 World Cups. In the final of 2012 T20 World cup Samuels scored 78 runs and in the final of 2016 world cup, he scored 85 runs. On both the occasions, the West Indies team was stuck in a difficult position and it was Samuels who rescued the team on both the junctures.
A veteran of 65 Tests, Samuels have been a successful player of his team as in the 65 Test matches played by him, he has score 3673 runs. He was seen struggling in past two series against Sri Lanka and Australia. He also failed in the first innings in the first Test match after which news came that he might be dropped for next Test match but he somehow delayed that by scoring half century in innings that followed.
Surely, if Samuels decides to call it a day in the longest format then it will be a big blow for West Indies cricket as they do not have anyone who can fill his shoes. Currently, Samuels is the most experienced player in West Indies team. Rest of the West Indies team is quite young and new to the international cricket like an infant.
Samuels will soon take a final call on this and look at his interview with Cricbuzz it looks like he is deeply thinking on this matter as he said “The way how things are right now, it is forcing me to give it (Test cricket) up. If you look at the system now, we have more young players playing when we should have more senior players and a couple of young players.”
His words have come soon after the West Indies team suffered a humiliating defeat against the Indian team in the first Test match. Indian team crushed the hosts by a margin of an innings and 92 runs. The West Indies tailenders played a crucial role in minimising the margin of defeat as they went to score more than 200 runs in the match.
Surely if everything goes like this then a complete whitewash is here for sure.