Haynes said, Hetmyer available but ‘fair to stick with the guys’ who did well in South Africa

Shimron Hetmyer did make himself available for the 2023 ODI World Cup qualifiers in Zimbabwe, but Desmond Haynes, the West Indies men’s chief selector, has stated that he has not been chosen. 

He claimed that the management of the team preferred to keep the squad that performed well in the limited-overs series played in South Africa earlier this year.

Both the World Cup qualifying team and the three-match ODI series against UAE in Sharjah did not include Shimron Hetmyer. West Indies drew the ODI series 1-1 and won the T20I series 2-1 in South Africa, and Haynes believed it was “fair to stick with the guys” who had performed well there.

“Yes, Hetmyer was available. He did send through an email or correspondence to Jimmy [Adams], our director of cricket, stating that he was available for the tour,” Haynes told reporters at a virtual press conference. 

“What we selectors decided to do was that we’ve just had a new [ODI] captain in Shai Hope and he was very happy to express his views about the type of camaraderie we had in the team in South Africa.”

“We as selectors saw commitment, we saw a real change in our approach to one-day cricket, and we thought it was only fair to stick with these guys.”

Since July 2021, Hetmyer has not participated in an ODI match, and in August 2022, he last represented the West Indies in a T20 match. After failing to take a rescheduled flight to Australia, he was then dropped from the T20 World Cup squad the previous year.

However, Haynes stated clearly that “no player was ruled out of selection.”

“I must say, though, that I just want the public to know that nobody has been ruled out of selection for the West Indies. We do not have the depth of players to rule out anybody for selection,”

he said.

While waiting until after this year’s CPL before declaring himself unavailable for selection, Evin Lewis. When Lewis was re-inducted into the national team for the T20 World Cup last year, West Indies was unable to go past the preliminary round thanks to their 42 run performance in three games.

“The last time we contacted Evin, he said that he was rather busy, he was doing some work at home, and he said that he would not be available till after the CPL. I hope I am right there and not misquoting him,”

Haynes said. 

“As I said before, we really cannot afford to sideline anyone. We are interested in selecting the best team for West Indies and to make sure that we appreciate where we are standing in world cricket and we want to improve that and we want pick the best players, who are committed, who we feel can play the roles for us in order to get us from the bottom of the pack.”

In addition to the older professionals, Haynes stated that West Indies is trying to develop a future leadership group with players like Joshua Da Silva, Alick Athanaze, and Brandon King. West Indies A is being led by Da Silva at the moment in Bangladesh, where the two ‘A’ sides will compete in three four-day matches.

“What we are trying to do is to encourage a group of players who we can have that can play leadership roles, and we have got our eye on people like Brandon King, Alick Athanaze, who has captained the Windward Islands this year and we were very impressed with him leadership. Also it did not affect his batting, which we thought was very important,”

Haynes said. 

“We had to be consistent as well. Going forward, what we plan to do is to make some recommendations to Cricket West Indies where they will look at a list of players that we can start moving for leadership.”

“I think Joshua would be one of them, and then we have Shai Hope who is captain in the 50-over and there would be plenty more that we would be looking at in the future.”