ST JOHN'S, An­tigua-Chair­man of se­lec­tors Clyde Butts has wel­comed Chris Gayle's re­turn to the West In­dies team for the one-day tour of Eng­land and says the big-hit­ting left-han­der will bring a "qual­i­ty di­men­sion" to the Caribbean side. The tal­is­man­ic Gayle was on Mon­day cho­sen in a 15-man squad, break­ing a pro­tract­ed im­passe with the West In­dies Crick­et Board that saw him ex­clud­ed from se­lec­tion for the last 14 months. "Chris is a play­er of proven qual­i­ty and we are look­ing for­ward to him adding this di­men­sion to the side and his con­tri­bu­tions as a se­nior mem­ber of the squad," Butts said. The way was paved for Gayle's re­turn af­ter he sat down in a high-lev­el meet­ing in St Vin­cent on Sun­day with his rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michael Hall, WICB pres­i­dent Ju­lian Hunte, WICB di­rec­tor El­son Crick and the Board's le­gal of­fi­cer Alan­na Med­ford. St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Bald­win Spencer al­so at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Gayle, who has scored 8087 runs from 228 ODIs with 19 cen­turies, will now join the side led by cap­tain Dar­ren Sam­my and which in­cludes eight mem­bers of the cur­rent Test squad al­ready on tour. Trinida­di­an open­er Lendl Sim­mons has al­so been re­called fol­low­ing in­jury while Dwayne Smith has been giv­en the nod in a one-day unit for the first time in over two years. Butts said the com­po­si­tion of the team re­flect­ed the con­tin­ued prepa­ra­tion for the 2015 World Cup in Aus­tralia. "We are now be­gin­ning to move in­to the next phase of the de­vel­op­ment of the team as we con­tin­ue to build our ODI side as we con­tin­ue to plan for the 2015 World Cup," Butts point­ed out. "A num­ber of play­ers who we have been ex­posed to in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et and who, by their re­cent per­for­mances, have shown that they can play roles in the team have been re­tained." "There is, what we be­lieve, a bal­anced com­bi­na­tion of young ris­ing play­ers like Sunil Nar­ine in the bowl­ing de­part­ment and John­son Charles in the top or­der of the bat­ting in ad­di­tion to the well-known-sea­soned in­ter­na­tion­als." West In­dies face Eng­land in three ODIs from June 16-24. (CMC)