In a surprising move, Kieron Pollard officially named the limited-overs captain of West Indies

Over the last few months, West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has struggled to pick the right person as the captain of the side. In limited-overs cricket, there has been a lot of shuffling around. Jason Holder, who is also the Test captain of the team, was named the captain of the ODI side for the World Cup 2019. However, the all-rounder hasn’t tasted a great deal of success as the skipper. Thus, a change seemed inevitable and there were quite a few names up for consideration. But, quite surprisingly, the WICB decided to go ahead with Kieron Pollard.

The 32-year-old, who has been actively playing in various T20 leagues all over the world, isn’t a regular part of the West Indies set-up. Pollard has represented the team in the T20I format on and off in the last few years. Hence, this decision from the West Indies Cricket Board was quite shocking and surprising. Even though he was a part of the T20I series against India recently, Kieron Pollard didn’t feature in the ODI team for a while now.

Kieron Pollard last played an ODI game in 2016

Kieron Pollard last played an ODI game against Pakistan at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in 2016. Ever since then, he was constantly overlooked by the selectors even though he performed well at times. Furthermore, he was ignored for the World Cup 2019 as well and was no way in contention to make it into the ODI team any time soon. However, the WICB decided to name his the skipper for this format as well as for the T20I format. This means that he will be replacing Carlos Brathwaite as the leader of the team in the shortest format of the game.

Thus far in his career, Kieron Pollard has featured in a total of 101 ODI matches. He scored 2289 runs at an average of about 26. The veteran cricketer has got 3 centuries and 9 half-centuries to his name. Moreover, he also played 62 T20Is where he scored 903 runs. When given the leadership for a game in IPL 2019, he was highly impressive and led the Mumbai Indians from the front.

“BREAKING NEWS – CWI President Ricky Skerritt announces the official appointment of Kieron Pollard as West Indies White Ball captain. #CWIPressConference,” the WICB Twitter handle wrote.