Af­ter not be­ing con­sid­ered for se­lec­tion on the West In­dies Test match teams for the tour to Eng­land in Ju­ly as well as the on-go­ing tour of New Zealand, West In­dies T20 vice-cap­tain Nicholas Pooran main­tains his de­sire to rep­re­sent the re­gion­al team on the Test stage some­day soon.

How­ev­er, those ex­clu­sions have gen­er­at­ed heavy de­bate at home and abroad about the play­er’s fu­ture, at what is re­gard­ed the high­est lev­el.

For the most part, Pooran, who was re­cent­ly named the re­gion­al side's T20 vice-cap­tain for the New Zealand se­ries, has main­tained si­lence on the mat­ter, un­til now.

He said, “I haven’t an­swered the ques­tion be­cause it got very tir­ing.

“Look, I made my­self avail­able for Test crick­et in the sum­mer­time. The se­lec­tors had to make their de­ci­sion and they ob­vi­ous­ly have their cri­te­ria. But I am still avail­able.”

Pooran was on­ly named in the T20 squad for three match­es against New Zealand on No­vem­ber 27, 28 and 30, but has agreed to stay in New Zealand be­yond those dates to play in two First-Class four-day match­es which the West In­dies A team will play against New Zealand A next, month. This he hopes will once and for all make a clear state­ment of in­tent.

How­ev­er, on Thurs­day, doubt was cast over Pooran’s in­volve­ment with the West In­dies A team when it was re­vealed that he had signed with the Mel­bourne Stars for Aus­tralia’s Big Bash League which be­gins on De­cem­ber 10.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports from Christchurch, New Zealand, where Pooran and the oth­er West In­dies play­ers join­ing the team from the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) are serv­ing a 14-day quar­an­tine, he ex­plained that he will on­ly join the Stars when his West In­dies du­ty is com­plet­ed.

"I’m just go­ing over (to Aus­tralia) for six games. That is my avail­abil­i­ty. My first game is on De­cem­ber 26 and I fly across (to Aus­tralia) af­ter that last First-Class game,” he said. “I made my­self avail­able for those two First Class games and I am stick­ing to it.”

His ris­ing de­mand by T20 fran­chis­es glob­al­ly is not a new phe­nom­e­non and sim­i­lar­ly to play­ers be­fore him, his will­ing­ness to cap­i­talise on those op­por­tu­ni­ties rather than grad­u­ate more quick­ly to Test-play­er sta­tus has di­vid­ed pub­lic opin­ion.

He re­spond­ed, “Every­one would want Pooran to say he’s not go­ing to play Big Bash, he’s not go­ing to play in Bangladesh or Eng­land. They want to see Pooran come back home and play First-Class crick­et be­cause they want to see him play Test crick­et but what if I play a whole First-Class sea­son and don’t per­form, they will say Pooran not good and is not ready for Test crick­et. So re­gard­less of what I do, peo­ple will have their own opin­ion.”

Look­ing ahead to the First-Class match­es in New Zealand, Pooran ac­knowl­edges that they rep­re­sent a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress the se­lec­tors, who in­sist that he and oth­ers need First Class ex­pe­ri­ence be­fore be­com­ing el­i­gi­ble for Test match se­lec­tion.

The 25-year-old has on­ly played three First-Class match­es in his ca­reer so far, which all came for T&T in 2014 when he was just 19 years old. In his sec­ond match of that sea­son, Pooran made his high­est score to date, 55 in the sec­ond in­nings ver­sus Ja­maica. Cur­rent­ly, he av­er­ages 23.83 in First-Class match­es.

Since then, he has steadi­ly emerged as a tal­ent­ed and of­ten de­struc­tive top-or­der bats­man in the short­est for­mat of the game, be­com­ing high­ly sought af­ter by teams around the world and as a re­sult, has seen few­er and few­er op­por­tu­ni­ties to make a name in the longest ver­sion.

“I play T20 crick­et around the world. I had to make a de­ci­sion and I had to live with it. The time has changed now and the de­ci­sion I made back then is ob­vi­ous­ly dif­fer­ent to now. I had to com­pro­mise with Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) and now the op­por­tu­ni­ty has arisen,” said Pooran.

As far as re­cent tours go, how­ev­er, first-class arrange­ments such as A team match­es for West In­di­an play­ers are rare.

And Pooran ex­plained, that like many be­fore him, mak­ing one­self avail­able for the re­gion­al First-Class sea­son is eas­i­er said, than done.

“A sea­son now is six or sev­en games. And dur­ing the sea­son we al­so usu­al­ly have 50-Over crick­et for the West In­dies. So to play First-Class crick­et I may have to forego play­ing ODIs (One Day In­ter­na­tion­als) for the West In­dies as well. So when do they want me to play First-Class crick­et? That is the ques­tion,” he said.

“I am al­so putting my­self at risk as well be­cause rest and re­cov­ery are al­so very im­por­tant.”

The left-han­der called for the se­lec­tors to be more com­pro­mis­ing and un­der­stand­ing of play­ers’ cir­cum­stances.

As for his im­pend­ing show­case be­fore the Test match se­lec­tors, Pooran is rel­ish­ing the chal­lenge.

“First-Class is a new chal­lenge for me. I last played about six years ago and didn’t do too bad. But at the end of the day, First-Class, Test crick­et, ODI crick­et T20 crick­et it's all the same. I just need to chal­lenge my­self to try to bat longer, score runs and be con­sis­tent. If I need to do good in First-Class crick­et, then I need to chal­lenge my­self. But I don’t need to prove any­thing to any­one."