DUBLIN, Ire­land – De­spite hav­ing not played a Test match for the West In­dies in al­most four years, West In­dies white-ball cap­tain Shai Hope is still ea­ger to face the red ball once again.

The 31-year-old Hope last played a Test match for the re­gion­al side in No­vem­ber 2021, when they faced Sri Lan­ka at home in Galle.

Since then, he has fea­tured promi­nent­ly in the Windies’ One Day In­ter­na­tion­al (ODI) and T20I teams and was re­cent­ly el­e­vat­ed to the post of T20I cap­tain.

How­ev­er, Hope said he had not ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­turn­ing to the Test team, where he has played 38 match­es and scored 1726 runs at an av­er­age of 25.01, in­clu­sive of two hun­dreds and five fifties.

Back in 2017 he an­nounced him­self on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage by be­com­ing the first man to score cen­turies in both in­nings of a first-class match at Head­in­g­ley, which helped West In­dies to a his­toric Test vic­to­ry over Eng­land.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, Hope re­cent­ly turned down an of­fer by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) to be in­ter­viewed for the role of Test cap­tain, say­ing he pre­ferred to fo­cus on his roles as white-ball cap­tain.

How­ev­er, speak­ing dur­ing a pre-match press con­fer­ence on Tues­day ahead of the West In­dies’ open­ing ODI against Ire­land, Hope said while he would not delve in­to the rea­son be­hind his de­ci­sion, he was still very in­ter­est­ed in play­ing Test crick­et again.

“There’s noth­ing to share there so I wouldn’t re­al­ly go too far in depth with this one, but I’m cer­tain­ly look­ing for­ward to play­ing some white clothes crick­et and if the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es again, I’d be hap­py to take it,” Hope said.

His com­ments come just two months af­ter West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my said he would like to see the re­gion’s best T20 and ODI play­ers bol­ster the Test team.

CMC