ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Shim­ron Het­my­er has been re­placed in the West In­dies squad for this month’s Twen­ty20 World Cup af­ter miss­ing an al­ready resched­uled flight to Aus­tralia on Mon­day.

Crick­et West In­dies said the left-han­der had been sched­uled to leave Guyana on Sat­ur­day but had re­quest­ed a de­layed de­par­ture from Guyana due to “fam­i­ly rea­sons”.

Ac­cord­ing to CWI, Het­my­er on Mon­day told di­rec­tor of crick­et, Jim­my Adams, that he “would not be able to get to the air­port in time” for the flight to New York – the first leg of his trip Down Un­der.

Shamarh Brooks, who topped the av­er­ages for re­cent­ly crowned Caribbean Pre­mier League cham­pi­ons Ja­maica Tallawahs, has been called up by se­lec­tors to re­place Het­my­er.

“This af­ter­noon we in­formed the CWI Board of Di­rec­tors that the se­lec­tion pan­el had unan­i­mous­ly de­cid­ed to re­place Shim­ron Het­my­er with Shamarh Brooks in our T20 World Cup squad,” Adams said.

“Whilst we changed Shim­ron’s flight from Sat­ur­day to Mon­day due to fam­i­ly rea­sons, it was made clear to him that if there were any fur­ther de­lays and is­sues with his trav­el to Aus­tralia then we would have no choice but to re­place him in the squad, as we are not pre­pared to com­pro­mise the team’s abil­i­ty to pre­pare for this ex­treme­ly im­por­tant glob­al event.”

Het­my­er’s re­moval from the squad is yet an­oth­er blow to his top­sy-turvy in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer, the 25-year-old on­ly re­turn­ing to the squad in Ju­ly fol­low­ing a nine-month spell on the side­lines due to per­son­al and fit­ness is­sues.

The T20 for­mat is the on­ly form of the game in which he cur­rent­ly fea­tures, hav­ing not turned out in a Test in three years and a One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al in just over a year.

Shamarh Brooks

CWI Media

Brooks, mean­while, will get the chance to re­sus­ci­tate his T20 ca­reer af­ter play­ing the last of his 11 match­es last Au­gust against New Zealand but then miss­ing out on a place for the World Cup.

The el­e­gant right-han­der shone with an ex­tra­or­di­nary un­beat­en hun­dred for Tallawahs last week in a tour­na­ment-high 226 for four, which helped his side to a 37-run win over the Het­my­er-led Guyana Ama­zon War­riors in the sec­ond qual­i­fi­er of the CPL.

“Shamarh has been a part of our re­cent T20 In­ter­na­tion­al squads and de­liv­ered strong per­for­mances in the lat­ter stages of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed CPL,” Adams said.

“He will fly out as soon as pos­si­ble this week to Aus­tralia and I wish him and all the squad all the very best for the tour­na­ment.”

West In­dies face hosts Aus­tralia in the first of two T20 In­ter­na­tion­al in Gold Coast on Wednes­day, the se­ries serv­ing as prepa­ra­tion for the Oc­to­ber 16 to No­vem­ber 13 T20 World Cup.

CMC

WEST IN­DIES ICC T20 WORLD CUP 2022 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

FULL SQUAD: Nicholas Pooran (cap­tain), Rov­man Pow­ell (vice cap­tain), Shamarh Brooks, Yan­nic Cari­ah, John­son Charles, Shel­don Cot­trell, Ja­son Hold­er, Akeal Ho­sein, Alzarri Joseph, Bran­don King, Evin Lewis, Kyle May­ers, Obed Mc­Coy, Ray­mon Reifer, Odean Smith

MATCH SCHED­ULE

T20 In­ter­na­tion­al Se­ries, Aus­tralia vs West In­dies

Wednes­day: 1st T20I, Aus­tralia vs West In­dies, Met­ri­con Sta­di­um, Gold Coast

Fri­day: 2nd T20I, Aus­tralia vs West In­dies, The Gab­ba, Bris­bane

ICC MEN’s T20 WORLD CUP 2022, Aus­tralia

Round 1 - Groups

Group A: Sri Lan­ka, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, the Nether­lands, and Namib­ia

​Group B: Scot­land, West In­dies, Zim­bab­we, and Ire­land

(Top two teams from each group ad­vance to Su­per 12s)

Round 1 - Match Sched­ule (all played at Bel­lerive Oval, Ho­bart).

Oc­to­ber 17: West In­dies v Scot­land, 12 am (T&T time)

Oc­to­ber 19: West In­dies v Zim­bab­we, 4 am

Oc­to­ber 21: West In­dies v Ire­land, 12 am

Su­per 12s

Group 1: Eng­land, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Afghanistan, A1 and B2.

Group 2: In­dia, Pak­istan, Pak­istan, South Africa, A2 and B1.

(Top two teams from each group ad­vance to the se­mi-fi­nals)

SE­MI-FI­NALS

No­vem­ber 9: ​ SCG, Syd­ney

No­vem­ber 10: Ade­laide Oval, Ade­laide

FI­NAL

No­vem­ber 13: MCG, Mel­bourne