ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Wick­et­keep­er/bats­man Shane Dowrich has abrupt­ly re­tired from in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et just ten days af­ter be­ing re­called to the West In­dies squad, fol­low­ing a three-year ex­ile.

Crick­et West In­dies made the shock an­nounce­ment Thurs­day, say­ing the 32-year-old Bar­ba­di­an’s de­ci­sion was with “im­me­di­ate ef­fect” and had led to his with­draw­al from the 15-man squad for the One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al se­ries against Eng­land start­ing Sun­day in An­tigua.

Dowrich fea­tured in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Su­per50 Cup in Trinidad and To­ba­go, where he cap­tained Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges while scor­ing 234 runs at an av­er­age of 78.

“We want to thank Shane for con­tri­bu­tion when he played for West In­dies,” said CWI’s di­rec­tor of crick­et, Miles Bas­combe.

“He is a dis­ci­plined, hard-work­ing crick­eter who al­ways gave his ut­most in front and be­hind the stumps.

“He had a mem­o­rable se­ries in 2019 when he made an out­stand­ing Test cen­tu­ry on home soil in Bar­ba­dos to help us beat Eng­land and win the Wis­den Tro­phy.

“We re­spect his de­ci­sion to re­tire and ap­pre­ci­ate it is not an easy one to make. We wish him all the best as he steps away from the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.”

CWI said in its state­ment no re­place­ment would be named.

Dowrich, who played 35 Tests and a sin­gle One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al, saw a promis­ing ca­reer plunged in­to tur­moil when he al­so abrupt­ly left the tour of New Zealand three years ago for “per­son­al rea­sons”.

That de­vel­op­ment was fol­lowed by a pro­tract­ed break from first-class crick­et, with the play­er fi­nal­ly mak­ing a re­turn last year.

His re­call to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et this month came four-and-a-half years af­ter he played his on­ly ODI but in de­fend­ing the move, chief se­lec­tor, the Most Ho­n­ourable Desmond Haynes, said Dowrich still had much to of­fer West In­dies crick­et.

“Dowrich has proven to be [a good] play­er, bat­ting in the mid­dle, play­ing spin very well,” Haynes said ear­li­er this month.

“He’s done well. Even though he hasn’t played a lot of one-day games, he’s done very well at Test lev­el and that’s one of the things as se­lec­tors – we al­ways think if you can per­form at Test lev­el, it makes it a lot eas­i­er play­ing 50-over crick­et.

“And Dowrich proved he can play at that lev­el with a cou­ple of Test hun­dreds.

“He had an ill­ness, he came back, he cap­tained the CCC team, done very well. He got a hun­dred and we were very im­pressed with the way he led the side.

“We just thought in the sit­u­a­tion of ob­vi­ous­ly we’ve on­ly got Shai (Hope) as a ’keep­er as well, we thought that Dowrich would just be the oth­er ’keep­er in the side.”

Dowrich scored 1 570 runs at an av­er­age of 29, hit­ting three cen­turies with a top score of 125 not out against Sri Lan­ka in Trinidad in 2018.

He snared 85 catch­es and five stump­ings.

(CMC)