One international career was once more surprisingly revived, a couple of others are ready to reboot after injury and a few more were terminally ended or put on hold as the West Indies yesterday named their squad of 15 for the imminent International Cricket Council (ICC) Twenty20 World championship in the Caribbean.
Wavell Hinds, the 33-year-old left-hand batsman and right-arm medium pacer ignored by the selectors for four years before his chance recall for the recent limited-overs series in Australia, has again been plucked out of obscurity for the April 30-May 16 tournament.
Batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, absent since December with back problems, and fast bowler Jerome Taylor, out since November with a strained hip, are two key players fit again and back in the side.
Their class and experience come as a timely boost for a major tournament on home territory that can erase some of the disturbing memories of the debacle in the 2007 World Cup, on and off the field.
Dwayne Smith, who turns 27 in 10 days, and Lendl Simmons, 25, two multi-talented cricketers who have worn West Indies colours in the past year, seem to have exhausted the selectors’ patience with their inconsistency.
Both have been omitted. Still young enough, their future lies in their hands.
Only Hinds’ selection encourages Runako Morton and Travis Dowlin to hold out hope that their exclusion is not permanent. They are on the wrong side of 30 and were dropped for the recent home series against Zimbabwe after their failures in Australia.
On the theory that 20-overs-an-innings cricket is no place for developing young players, the classy Trinidadian batsmen, Adrian Barath, 19, and left-hander Darren Bravo, 20, have presumably been kept back for the longer matches in the ODIs and Tests against South Africa that immediately follow the World Twenty20.
Hinds is the only clearly unexpected pick in a generally predictable squad.
After 45 Tests and 114 ODIs between 1999 and 2006, he had disappeared from the West Indies’ radar.
He turned up instead in the now defunct Indian Cricket League (ICL) and in the English county championship with Derbyshire before a prolific 2010 regional first-class season for Jamaica (330 runs, average 110) and the absence through injury of Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Sarwan brought him back for the five ODIs and two Twenty20s in Australia in February.
He managed only 36 runs in four innings there and was left out of the subsequent one-day home series against Zimbabwe. With Chanderpaul and Sarwan in shape again, that seemed to be the end of his fleeting return. The selectors saw it differently.
Chairman of the panel, Clyde Butts, said yesterday that Hinds “brings a wealth of experience” to the team.
“He is a knowledgeable cricketer and we believe can make a good contribution in the middle-order as well,” he contended.
Smith has paid a rough price for his final over slog in the loss to Zimbabwe in the first ODI in Guyana in February. It left his stumps shattered, the West Indies beaten and captain Chris Gayle publicly fuming.
He was promptly dumped and his cricket is now likely to be confined to the foreign teams (English county Sussex, Australian state New South Wales and Indian Premier League franchises Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers) for whom he has been a Twenty20 specialist over the past two years.
Kieron Pollard, another power-hitting all-rounder whose Twenty20 exploits have earned him million-dollar contracts with the IPL’s Mumbai Indians, Australia’s South Australia Redbacks and England’s Somerset Sabres, might well have gone the way of Smith for similarly reckless dismissals against Zimbabwe.
His retention throughout that series revealed that, rightly or wrongly, the selectors believe he is a potential match-winner in the shortest form of the game.
Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Pollard and Kemar Roach are presently sharpening up in the Twenty20 IPL. The remaining players were training in Barbados last week and move on to Jamaica for the Jamaica Cricket Festival April 7-18.
There they play three Twenty20 matches against Ireland (along with England one of their qualifying round opponents in the tournament proper) and one against Canada as well as one Fifty50 match against each.
The women’s squad for the World Twenty20 was also announced yesterday.
They play their qualifying round matches at Warner Park in St.Kitts May 5-10 with the semi-finals scheduled for St.Lucia May 13 and 14 and the final in Barbados May 16.
They prepare with a camp and warm-up matches against Pakistan and Sri Lanka in St.Kitts before their opening match against South Africa May 5.
Their chances were boosted with victories over England, the ICC’s No.1 rated team, in ODI and Twenty20 series in St.Kitts last November.
And they should provide keen competition with the men as to which one does better. Given the Caribbean’s homophobic tendency, it should be one incentive for Gayle’s team.
MEN’S SQUAD: Chris Gayle (Captain), Sulieman Benn, Dwayne Bravo, Shiv Chanderpaul, Narsingh Deonarine, Andre Fletcher, Wavell Hinds, Nikita Miller, Kieron Pollard, Denesh Ramdin, Ravi Rampaul, Kemar Roach, Darren Sammy, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Jerome Taylor.
WOMEN’S SQUAD: Merissa Aguilleira (Captain). Kirbyina Alexander, Shemaine Campbelle, Britney Cooper, Shanel Daley, Deandra Dottin, Cordel Jack, Stacy-Ann King, Pamela Lavine, Anisa Mohammed, Juliana Nero, Shakera Selman, Tremayne Smartt, Stafanie Taylor
