As West Indies announced their squad for T20 World Cup 2022, a lot of people were surprised why Andre Russell and Sunil Narine were not a part of the squad despite the fact that none of these two players has announced their retirement from T20 international cricket yet.
After the T20 World Cup last year in UAE, some of the stalwarts of West Indies T20 cricket Dwayne Bravo, Chris Gayle, Lendl Simmons, and Kieron Pollard bade adieu to the shortest format of the game, but Russell and Narine didn’t do so.
While Russell and Narine don’t generally play in the bilateral T20I series that the West Indies national cricket team plays apart from the World Cups, it was expected that these two players would be named in the West Indies squad for the upcoming World Cup in Australia, because of the skillset that they have and the experience that they have gained over the years in the T20 leagues.
Narine wasn’t interested in T20 World Cup and we wanted to move on from Russell: Desmond Haynes
But, the West Indies chief selector Desmond Haynes, who has also been an opening batsman for West Indies in the past, revealed that the current West Indies captain Nicholas Pooran had regular conversations with Sunil Narine about his availability for the T20 World Cup 2022.
West Indies squad for the T20 World Cup 2022:-
Pooran (C), Powell, Yannic, Charles, Cottrell, Hetmyer, Holder, Akeal Hosein, Joseph, Brendon King, Lewis, Mayers, Obed McCoy, Reifer and Odean Smith.
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It didn’t seem at any stage that Narine was interested in playing for West Indies anymore. When asked about Russell, Desmond Haynes said that in the case of Russell, the selection committee, and the team management, both were of the opinion that West Indies needed to move on from him and persist with a young all-rounder.
A couple of young all-rounders Odean Smith and Romario Shepherd have played for West Indies regularly in T20I cricket in the last one year or so and the selectors eventually decided to go with Odean Smith for the T20 World Cup, rather than going back to Andre Russell.
