Another scrimmage between Andre Russell and the West Indies cricket board and head coach Phil Simmons seems to be on the card. It is public already – and the seriousness of it is so much that this could force the lanky all-rounder to maybe even make a big decision regarding his future with the West Indies team.
Last week, coach Phil Simmons and selector Desmond Haynes had strongly condemned the lack of clarity from some of West Indies’ star players about their availability for international matches.
“It hurts. There’s no other way to put it. But what can you do? I don’t think that I should be begging people to play for their countries. I think if you want to represent West Indies, you will make yourself available,” Simmons said.
Andre Russell was particularly irked by this comment from the West Indies coach. Russell, who is known to express his feeling clearly, then took to Instagram to make a cryptic post that has got everyone thinking whether the 34-year-old superstar all-rounder will never play international cricket again.
“I know this was coming but am gonna stay quiet!!!” Russell wrote in his Instagram post which headlined Simmons’ quote.
Andre Russell has not played for West Indies since the 2021 T20 World Cup. He’s playing the Hundred at the moment – along with Sunil Narine – and missed the home series against India and now against New Zealand. Russell hasn’t made himself available for selection for the West Indies. Haynes said “he is unavailable because he hasn’t made himself available” .
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Dre Russ.
(@ar12russell)Will Andre Russell play at the T20 World Cup 2022?
With the T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia only a couple of months away, this is a problem which the WICB would want to resolve as soon as possible.
According to Haynes, the West Indies management will give more weightage to performances in CWI-run tournaments, like the upcoming CPL, for selection – so both Russell and Narine are likely to be considered if they do well in the CPL, but nothing is guaranteed in this world.
“If there is a competition that is run by the West Indies (and) somebody is playing well, I think his name should really come up for selection. That performance is very important to us, and we didn’t say that we have picked the World Cup team yet, so all the games that are going to be played leading up to the World Cup, we must take into consideration,” Haynes said.
Part of the 2016 T20 World Cup winning team, Russell has so far played 67 T20Is for West Indies, in which he’s scored 741 runs at a strike rate of 156 and taken 39 wickets.
