For­mer West In­dies bat­ting star Nicholas Pooran has not com­plete­ly ruled out re­turn­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, but in­sists his present fo­cus is on de­vel­op­ing young tal­ent and giv­ing back to the game that has pro­vid­ed him with so much.

​Pooran made the dis­clo­sure Sat­ur­day on the open­ing day of his Nicky P Bat­ting Acad­e­my, held at the Ku­mar Ram­pat Crick­et Acad­e­my in Point Lisas.

​The left-hand­ed bats­man, who rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies in more than 160 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es dur­ing a 10-year ca­reer, said es­tab­lish­ing the acad­e­my was dri­ven by his pas­sion for crick­et de­vel­op­ment and help­ing young play­ers reach their full po­ten­tial.

“I'm blessed to be here and do­ing what I'm do­ing and I'm ob­vi­ous­ly blessed to have in­cred­i­ble tal­ent, which is crick­et. For me, my pas­sion is all about de­vel­op­ment, help­ing oth­er peo­ple achieve their full po­ten­tial as well, and the best way I can help is ob­vi­ous­ly giv­ing back through crick­et,” Pooran said.

The acad­e­my, es­tab­lished three years ago in part­ner­ship with his man­age­ment com­pa­ny, Per­cep­tion Man­age­ment, has al­ready pro­duced en­cour­ag­ing re­sults. Sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants have pro­gressed to rep­re­sent Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Un­der-15, U-17, and U-19 lev­els.

​Pooran said the pro­gramme con­tin­ues to ex­pand each year, aim­ing to in­tro­duce more young play­ers to qual­i­ty coach­ing, fit­ness train­ing, and op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn from es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eters.

Among those who have shared their ex­pe­ri­ences with the young­sters over the years are Bri­an Lara, Dwayne Bra­vo, and Kieron Pol­lard. This year's pro­gramme has al­so fea­tured Sunil Nar­ine, Akeal Ho­sein, Khary Pierre, Kjorn Ot­t­ley, and Pooran him­self.

​How­ev­er, Pooran em­pha­sized that the acad­e­my is not sim­ply about iden­ti­fy­ing the best bats­men, but rather find­ing young­sters who demon­strate en­thu­si­asm, com­mit­ment, and a gen­uine love for crick­et.

At the end of each camp, se­lect­ed play­ers are award­ed schol­ar­ships. Ten young­sters re­ceived schol­ar­ships in the first year, a fig­ure that grew to 15 in the sec­ond year.

​The six-month schol­ar­ships pro­vide two days of week­ly train­ing at the Ku­mar Ram­pat fa­cil­i­ty, in­cor­po­rat­ing strength and con­di­tion­ing, func­tion­al fit­ness, and spe­cialised bat­ting ses­sions.

​Pooran said the acad­e­my has at­tract­ed young­sters from across Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing Man­zanil­la and Rio Claro, and he hopes to con­tin­ue widen­ing its reach.

He ex­plained that the Ku­mar Ram­pat fa­cil­i­ty was se­lect­ed be­cause it was where he had trained for the past 11 years and helped him de­vel­op con­fi­dence as a bats­man.

​While some may ques­tion the use of con­crete pitch­es for play­er de­vel­op­ment, Pooran be­lieves they of­fer valu­able bat­ting prac­tice due to their con­sis­tent bounce and car­ry.

“For me, it's all about rep­e­ti­tion. Be­ing able to con­sis­tent­ly hit that ball off the mid­dle of the bat day in, day out,” he said.

​He al­so high­light­ed the ad­van­tage of an in­door fa­cil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing pe­ri­ods of un­pre­dictable weath­er.

​Pooran be­lieves young crick­eters should not let the ab­sence of ide­al fa­cil­i­ties be­come an ex­cuse for fail­ing to de­vel­op their skills. He point­ed out that some of the Caribbean's great­est bats­men, in­clud­ing Lara and Sir Vi­vian Richards, de­vel­oped their skills with­out the mod­ern fa­cil­i­ties avail­able to play­ers to­day.

“As pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes, we make a lot of ex­cus­es. That's one thing I want to be an ad­vo­cate of, teach­ing the younger chil­dren that it's not go­ing to be one where you're go­ing to have the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty, the per­fect at­mos­phere, per­fect sur­round­ings or per­fect com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

“Let's not use those ex­cus­es to stop us from be­ing the best ver­sion of our­selves, es­pe­cial­ly if we want to be ath­letes.”

​Mean­while, when asked whether he missed rep­re­sent­ing the West In­dies, Pooran said he thor­ough­ly en­joyed his decade in in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, but is now em­brac­ing a new chap­ter in his ca­reer.

​He al­so re­fused to com­plete­ly close the door on a pos­si­ble re­turn to the ma­roon colours.

“I've nev­er shut that door com­plete­ly. Time changes fast. I don't know what the fu­ture holds, but at this mo­ment, this is what my en­er­gy and my fo­cus is in­to,” Pooran said.

For now, his at­ten­tion re­mains on mak­ing the most of his cur­rent op­por­tu­ni­ties, while us­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge to help pro­duce the next gen­er­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go crick­eters.