Bridgetown, Barbados — The West Indies Cricket Board’s Selection Panel has called up allrounder Narsingh Deonarine to the 13-man squad to face Australia in the First Digicel Test at Kensington Oval, starting Saturday.
Deonarine, 28, is a left-handed middle-order batsman and right-arm off-break bowler. He last played for the West Indies two years ago in the Digicel Series against South Africa. He has been the leading batsman in this year’s WICB Regional 4 Day tournament with 582 runs in seven matches at an average of 44.76. He has also bowled well with 20 wickets at 16.9 each, with best figures of 7-26 against Barbados.
Speaking at the announcement of the squad, Chairman Clyde Butts said the Selection Panel decided to keep faith with most of the members of the squad which performed well on the West Indies overseas tours to Bangladesh and India late last year as the West Indies aim to build a strong Test-match unit.
“Deonarine has been the leading the batsman this season in the Regional 4 Day and has demonstrated his commitment and a new level of maturity. We have not seen many big scores from the batsmen in this year’s competition, but he has played some very good innings for Guyana and also bowled very well coming onto the latter half of the tournament. We expect this same level of focus against the Aussies. He is sure to be an asset,” Butts said.
“We expect our batsman to perform well on their home pitches. We saw some good individual performances with the bat on the away tours late last year. We have kept faith with the players who did well in Bangladesh and India and we believe they will come good as a group. The bowling unit did very well for us all last year and we expect the same this year.”
Full Squad
Darren Sammy (Captain)
Kirk Edwards (Vice Captain)
Adrian Barath
Carlton Baugh (Wicket-keeper)
Devendra Bishoo
Kraigg Brathwaite
Darren Bravo
Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Narsingh Deonarine
Fidel Edwards
Kieran Powell
Ravi Rampaul
Kemar Roach
