Pollard chooses Somerset over A tour

da betway： Kieron Pollard has turned down a place on the one-day leg of theWest Indies A tour to England in favour of his deal with Somerset

Andrew McGlashan06-Jun-2010

Kieron Pollard has put his domestic Twenty20 future ahead of his WestIndies career by turning down a place on the one-day leg of theA-team tour to England in favour of his deal with Somerset for theFriends Provident t20.Pollard, the hard-hitting allrounder, is due to link up with thecounty shortly but was offered a place on the West Indies A tour whichincludes a triangular series with England Lions and India A inJune. However, Cricinfo understands he declined that opportunitybecause he isn’t on a WICB retainer contract and doesn’t feel anobligation to deny himself a lucrative spell with Somerset where themoney on offer is substantially more than what he would earn with the Ateam.”We are not impressed,” a West Indies source told Cricinfo. “We had alot of talks with him to try and persuade him otherwise and spell outhis pathway for the future, but he wanted to play for Somersetinstead. We were trying to help his cricket develop by giving himan A tour, but he didn’t want to take up the offer.”Pollard is not among the 35 players contracted by the WICB and theplayers association, WIPA, has defended his move saying it would beunfair to deny him the chance to take up his county deal.”He signed his contract with Somerset a long time before the squad wasannounced and he isn’t contracted with the West Indies board,” DinanthRamnarine, the WIPA president, told Cricinfo. “If he was he probablywouldn’t have had a choice, but it would almost be restraint of tradeto stop him going to Somerset.”Pollard was one of the big-money signings at last year’s IPL auction, when he joined Mumbai Indians for more than $750,000, having impressed at the Champions League Twenty20 for Trinidad and Tobago, when he smashed 54 off 18 balls against New South Wales. But his international numbers are struggling to justify the hype with a Twenty20 international average of 12.66 and ODI figure of 19.92.In the recent World Twenty20, Pollard averaged a paltry 9.40 before managingto lift that to a more respectable 26.80 in the recent one-day series against South Africa.The clash between West Indies A duty and his Somerset stint isn’t thefirst time Pollard’s Twenty20 career has been at loggerheads with hisinternational duties. There was talk of him suing the WICB for loss ofearnings after he was called up to face Zimbabwe making him to miss Mumbai’s opening IPL match in March.However, Cricinfo understands that the legal threat has now beendropped although the increasing tensions between player and board seemunlikely to disappear any time soon.