Veteran West Indies spinner Sunil Narine announces retirement from international cricket

Veteran West Indies off-spinner Sunil Narine brought the curtains down on his international career on Sunday.Narine, a T20 World Cup-winner with the West Indies, announced his international retirement via a post in Instagram on Sunday evening.“Eternally grateful,” is how the 35-year-old captioned the post on the social networking platform. "I appreciate it has been over four years since I last played for West Indies but today I am announcing my retirement from international cricket."Publicly I am a man of few words but privately there are a few people who have given me unwavering support throughout my career and helped me realise my dream of representing West Indies and to you I express my deepest gratitude," Narine further wrote in the post.The Trinidadian made 65 and 51 appearances in ODIs and T20Is respectively for the Windies besides six Tests since making his debut in the tour of India in late 2011, with the last of those appearances coming in a T20I against India in 2019.The off-spinner finishes with 165 wickets to his name — 92 and 52 in ODIs and T20Is respectively besides 21 in his six Test appearances.Narine was part of the West Indian team that defeated Sri Lanka in the final of the 2012 ICC World Cup in Colombo to win their first world title — ODI or T20I — since their 1979 Prudential World Cup triumph in England.The off-spinner collected nine wickets in that tournament at an average of 15.44 which included superb figures of 3/9 in 3.4 overs in the final against hosts Sri Lanka.Narine, would go on to represent the West Indies in the 2014 World T20 as well, where they would go as far as the semi-finals, and was also named in the squad for the 2015 ICC World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, only to pull out of that tournament. He was not part of West Indies' second T20 World Cup triumph in 2016 in India.Narine, however, remains a key figure in T20 leagues across the world, including in the Indian Premier League (IPL) where he remains part of the Kolkata Knight Riders as well as in the sister franchise in the Caribbean Premier League, the Trinbago Knight Riders.Narine has nearly 500 (483) T20 appearances to his credit, the last of which came in the final of CPL 2023 in which Trinbago finished runners-up after a nine-wicket defeat at the hands of Guyana Amazon Warriors. He has 525 wickets to his credit in the shortest format of the game that includes 12 four-wicket haul and a lone five-for.Having bid goodbye to international cricket, Narine will dedicate his remaining years of his playing career to the T20 leagues that have mushroomed all over the world and have soared in popularity.