Rain, No Play

Hurricane Dean, a category 4 storm, is expected to come onshore Jamaica, where I am, sometime later today and given the expected power outages that will follow, this might be my last post for a while here, depending on how long the power outages last after the storm.

Dean has already killed 5 persons across the Caribbean and caused significant damage to Dominica, St. Lucia, St Kitts and Martinique. Here's hoping that the recovery efforts across the Caribbean will go as quickly and as smoothly as possible. As the rains begin to pick up outside, let's hope that the loss of life and property will be kept to the bare minimum.

The West Indies' selectors today named the 15 man squad for the Twenty20 World Cup which begins on September 11 in South Africa with the hosts taking on the West Indies. The squad reads:

Ramnaresh Sarwan (captain)
Chris Gayle
Shivnarine Chanderpaul
Devon Smith
Marlon Samuels
Runako Morton
Denesh Ramdin (wkt)
Dwayne Bravo
Darren Sammy
Dwayne Smith
Ravi Rampaul
Daren Powell
Fidel Edwards
Narsingh Deonarine
Pedro Collins  read more »

It's been slow news in the world of West Indies cricket the last few weeks, with the Windies not playing any international cricket. But here's a run down of some of the happenings in case you missed them:

- Congratulations to Guyana, who have won the TCL West Indies Under 19 Challenge, their 13th victory in regional youth competitions. The limited overs competition follows in the coming week. One wonders though how a Trinidad team with the likes of Adrian Barath and Darren Bravo who have represented the all-conquering Trinis at the first class level, could only mange third place?

-South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, England, India and Australia have all named their final 15 man squads for the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup which begins in one month on September 11. Many big names, such as Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Kallis, Fleming, Yousuf and Razzaq have been left out of their respective squads for varying reasons. The West Indies, who play in the first match of the tournament, joins Scotland, Kenya and Zimbabwe as teams who have not yet named their final 15. I wonder if the Windies will have a training camp prior to the tournament? Information on the Twenty20 World Cup schedule can be found here.

- The WICB have finally advertised for a new head coach, 3 months after Bennett King stepped down. The closing date for applications is Aug 31, so rush in those applications! Incidentally, why does http://windiescricket.com lead to a page with "ws5"? Maybe a redirect to http://www.windiescricket.com/ would be in order?  read more »