West Indies batter Shimron Hetmyer has been dropped from T20 World Cup 2022 squad after he missed his ‘rescheduled’ flight to Australia. Cricket West Indies (CWI) has named Shamarh Brooks as his replacement with Hetmyer’s World Cup dreams now in tatters.
In an interesting turn of events, the southpaw had requested the Board to reschedule his flight which was originally scheduled for October 1 due to personal reasons. After which the CWI managed to secure a seat only for Hetmyer to call up Jimmy Adams, CWI’s director of cricket, and inform that he won’t be traveling.
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Hetmyer was recently seen in action during the Carribean Premier League 2022 where he captained Guyana Amazon Warriors. The West Indies squad had already left for Australia in different groups with Hetmyer set to leave on October 1.
“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,” CWI said in a media release. “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.”
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Adams said that Hetmyer had been informed that “any further delay” in travel would cost him his World Cup spot.
“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.”
After the turn of events, CWI members chose to unanimously replace him with Brooks who would now fly out later this week.
He will miss out the two T20Is against Australia and will instead join the Nicholas Pooran led World Cup squad which will kick off its campaign against Scotland in the qualifiers. 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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