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Friday, June 13, 2025

‘I’ve been whispering in his ears’ – Powell wants Narine to play T20 World Cup

by

422 days ago
20240418
Rovman Powell speaks following the Indian Premier League game between his Rajasthan Royals and Sunil Narine’s Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday.

Rovman Powell speaks following the Indian Premier League game between his Rajasthan Royals and Sunil Narine’s Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday.

Courtesy BCCI

West In­dies T20I cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell has been try­ing to per­suade Sunil Nar­ine to un­re­tire from in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et to play in the up­com­ing T20 World Cup.

When asked about his in­ter­na­tion­al come­back a few days, Sunil Nar­ine said he would watch the T20 World Cup from home. Now, against the Ra­jasthan Roy­als on April 16, Nar­ine struck his maid­en IPL cen­tu­ry to pro­pel Kolkata Knight Rid­ers to 223-6.

Af­ter the match, he left a vague in­di­ca­tion of a change in stance: “It is what it is, but let’s see what the fu­ture holds.”

Nar­ine called time on his in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer in 2023, four years af­ter play­ing his last game, against In­dia. He was an in­te­gral part of the West In­dies team that won their maid­en T20 World Cup in 2012. From 51 T20Is, he has picked up 52 wick­ets at 21.25 and 6.01 with a ca­reer-best of 4-12.

Af­ter the match, Pow­ell re­vealed that he had been con­stant­ly try­ing to con­vince Nar­ine to take a U-turn on his in­ter­na­tion­al re­tire­ment: “For the last 12 months, I’ve been whis­per­ing in his ears, but he’s blocked out every­one. I’ve asked [Kieron] Pol­lard, [Dwayne] Bra­vo, [Nicholas] Pooran. Hope­ful­ly, be­fore they se­lect the team, they can crack his code.”

Pow­ell con­tributed with 26 off 13 in a nail-bit­ing run-chase. He took on Nar­ine in the 17th over, smash­ing him for four and two con­sec­u­tive six­es, but Nar­ine had his re­venge by trap­ping his na­tion­al cap­tain leg-be­fore

The match was even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed on the last ball with Jos But­tler (107 not out off 60) pulling off the joint-high­est suc­cess­ful chase in IPL his­to­ry vir­tu­al­ly on his own.

At 35, Nar­ine is ply­ing his trade as a T20 glo­be­trot­ter and has been per­form­ing ex­ceed­ing­ly well for KKR in IPL 2024. In ad­di­tion to his eco­nom­i­cal bowl­ing this year, he been ex­treme­ly suc­cess­ful as an open­ing bat­ter. So far this sea­son, he has amassed 276 runs at 46 and 188 and picked up sev­en wick­ets from six match­es.

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