Shimron Hetmyer has been dropped from the West Indies squad for the ICC T20 World Cup 2022 after missing a rescheduled flight. The decision was unanimously taken by the Cricket West Indies (CWI) selection panel. It has also been decided to replace him with Shamarh Brooks.
Hetmyer was initially set to fly to Australia on October 1st but asked CWI to reschedule his flight due to personal reasons. As a consequence, his flight was rescheduled that would leave on Monday, but the skipper of Guyana Amazon Warriors missed that flight too.
The flight was specially scheduled at Hetmyer’s request, only to tell the CWI director that the player would not be travelling. The rest of the squad has already left for Australia following the conclusion of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), for the all-important event starting this October.
In a statement, CWI narrated,
“The decision by the CWI selection panel was made as Shimron Hetmyer missed his re-scheduled flight to Australia, which had been changed from Saturday 1 October at his request, due to family reasons. With flight availability a real challenge, a seat was found for him to leave Guyana today, Monday, 3 October, meaning he would, unfortunately, miss the 1st T20 International (T20I) against Australia on Wednesday, 5 October at the Metricon Stadium. This morning, Mr Hetmyer informed the Director of Cricket that he would not be able to get to the airport in time for his flight this afternoon to New York.”
Jimmy Adams, the director of CWI, mentioned that it was already informed to Hetmyer that any further delay while catching the flight would cost him the World Cup.
“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. 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 significant global event.”
Hetmyer’s replacement, Brooks, will fly out later this week. He will not be part of the WI vs Aus series; the men in maroon are scheduled to play in Australia before starting their T20 World Cup campaign. Instead, he will directly join the squad in Melbourne to start the team’s qualifying campaign.
It must be noted that West Indies are placed in Group B, alongside Ireland, Scotland and Zimbabwe, with the top two teams progressing to the Super 12s.
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