BRIDGETOWN–Twen­ty20 cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my has spo­ken of his dis­ap­point­ment at not be­ing of­fered a re­tain­er con­tract by the West In­dies Crick­et Board.The for­mer Test cap­tain was one chopped from the 15-man list an­nounced re­cent­ly by the WICB for the pe­ri­od run­ning from Oc­to­ber 1 last year to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2016.

"It's the first time in the last sev­en or eight years that I've not been giv­en a re­tain­er by the WICB.

"It's quite dis­ap­point­ing but crick­et has not been about Dar­ren Sam­my, it's for the West In­di­an peo­ple," Sam­my was quot­ed as telling a Pak­istan crick­et web­site.

"I am dis­ap­point­ed that I nev­er re­ceived a con­tract from the WICB but it's not my de­ci­sion. I've played the two lim­it­ed-overs for­mats for West In­dies on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and per­formed the role I was asked. It's very dis­ap­point­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly as I am the Twen­ty20 cap­tain, but life goes on."

Sam­my has been a key fig­ure in West In­dies crick­et over the last five years and played a sig­nif­i­cant role in lead­ing the Caribbean side to the cap­ture of the Twen­ty20 World Cup in Sri Lan­ka four years ago.He al­so cap­tained the side in 30 of his 38 Tests be­fore re­tir­ing two years ago af­ter be­ing sacked in favour of De­nesh Ramdin.

Sam­my has con­tin­ued to play the short­er for­mats, how­ev­er, and was part of the one-day squad for the Crick­et World Cup in Aus­tralia and New Zealand last Feb­ru­ary.The 32-year-old, who now cam­paigns ex­ten­sive­ly in the var­i­ous do­mes­tic T20 leagues across the globe, said he re­mained com­mit­ted to rep­re­sent­ing West In­dies in the short­er for­mats.

"I guess they (WICB) are more fo­cused on Test crick­et which I've re­tired from but I'm ful­ly com­mit­ted to the One-Day and Twen­ty20 for­mat for West In­dies if se­lect­ed," Sam­my said.

"Look­ing back, when I was grow­ing up I on­ly dreamed of play­ing for West In­dies but now I can trav­el the world and play for so many dif­fer­ent fran­chise teams."

He added: "I've had some fan­tas­tic times play­ing for West In­dies. I en­joy play­ing for West In­dies and it is still my num­ber one pri­or­i­ty.

"I have nev­er missed a chance to play for West In­dies and have al­ways put play­ing for my coun­try first and I have al­ways made my­self avail­able for se­lec­tion."

Sam­my will lead the Windies at the T20 World Cup in In­dia in March.

CMC