CPL veteran Sammy thinking about his future

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Darren Sammy admits he is already starting to think about his future as he prepares to lead the St Lucia Stars at this year’s Hero Caribbean Premier League (CPL) which gets underway on 8 August.

The 34-year-old, who has captained the West Indies to two World T20 titles, will again be a senior figure in the St Lucia dressing room in the upcoming CPL season.

As an all-rounder who is still very much in demand, Sammy is far from done with playing cricket, but he has started thinking about what he will do when he does hang up his boots.

“A few of the franchises that I’ve played for, they want me to venture into coaching and mentoring.

“It’s something that I’ve spoken to my manager about, but to be honest with a young family coming up I’ll probably take a couple years off, raise my kids, enjoy life with my family because I’ve been on the road for like forever.

“I’ll watch my kids grow, get to see them take out a tooth and enjoy stuff like that, and in between definitely, probably, mentoring. I don’t want to spend all this time away from home anymore.

“Commentary – you know I’ll venture. The income acquired over the years, I just have to make sure it’s in the right places and investments that could sustain me and my family for my remainder of my days on this earth.”

It was a difficult year for the St Lucia Stars in 2017, with them failing to win a match, their only points came from an abandoned game at Warner Park, St Kitts. Sammy says they just never got going.

This year there is an almost completely new squad, with Sammy one of only five players that appeared last season.

“I think we just never gelled as a team out there. To start off, we missed a few key players, Lasith Malinga pulled out, David Miller pulled out, Shane Watson was injured the first three games of the tournament.

“We just never came out of the blocks. The race was finished, and we still didn’t get out of the blocks.

“I always say cricket has always been a team sport, but you need individual performances. We didn’t get that. We probably could bring in some changes to the franchise to make it better. So, I’m actually looking forward for this season and see what it brings.”

Sammy was relieved of the captaincy of the Stars halfway through last season and for CPL 2018 he says his focus this year is solely on his own on-field performance.

“Well, to be honest, this year I’ve taken a backseat in the planning. Obviously, things didn’t go well for us last year and I won’t be the captain of the franchise. I’m staying away from all this decision making.

“I will focus my energy in performing on the field obviously helping the captain and trying to win games for St. Lucia, especially when we are at home playing in the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground.”

Caribbean Premier League Darren Sammy St Lucia Stars

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