‘It is only fair to stick with guys who did well in South Africa’ – Desmond Haynes on not picking Shimron Hetmyer in WC Qualifier squad

West Indies announced their squad for the World Cup 2023 qualifiers that is set to take place in June and July in Zimbabwe. The two-time World-Cup winners also announced their 15-member squad with Shai Hope appointed as the captain while Rovman Powell as the vice-captain for the tournament. It was to everyone’s surprise that Shimron Hetmyer was not selected for the squad despite there being news that he made himself available for selection.

Responding to these speculations, the West Indies team's main selector Desmond Haynes confirmed that Hetmyer had made himself available for selection but selecting the Guyana-born cricketer would not be fair to players who are already around the team and have even shown great performances in the recently concluded South Africa series. Windies leveled the ODI series 1-1 and also went on to clinch the T20I series 2-1 against the Proteas.

"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 as quoted by ESPNcricinfo. "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”.

The 26-year-old was also not selected for the three-match ODI series against UAE which is to be played in Sharjah. However, the former opening batter also cleared the air by saying that no player is ruled out for selection into the national side.

"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 West Indies. We do not have the depth of players to rule out anybody for selection," he said.

Also, shedding light on the exclusion of Evin Lewis, Haynes said that he made himself unavailable for selection till after this year’s CPL. 

Nurturing players like King, Da Silva, and Athanaze as future leaders is the target: Haynes

Touching on the leadership topic, the lead selector for West Indies also scoped that the likes of Joshua Da Silva, Brandon King, and Alick Athanaze are being groomed for the role of leadership apart from some of the senior players. Da Silva is currently leading the West Indies A side which is set to play three four-day games against Bangladesh A side. 

"What we are trying to do is to encourage to get 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 Winward 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.