A couple of days ago, we saw West Indies head coach Phil Simmons share his disappointment over the unavailability of the players for the national team due to injury or busy playing in the various franchise leagues around the world. With only two months left until the T20 World Cup, West Indies are yet to decide on their regular players for the mega event.
Simmons said, “I don’t think that I should be begging people to play for their countries.” Notably, Sunil Narine and Andre Russell are currently playing in The Hundred tournament. However, that “begging” statement didn’t go well, and Russell has responded to it.
The T20 World Cup will kick off in October in Australia. All the other teams are busy with their preparations, whereas the West Indies are still struggling to figure out which players to choose because of their unavailability. And even after two back-to-back series losses at the hands of Bangladesh and India, the situation has become worse. One of the reasons for a bad performance is the unavailability of their key players.
This could hurt the two-time T20 World Champions at a larger extant. The likes of Sheldon Cottrell, Fabian Allen, and Roston Chase are out due to injuries, while Evin Lewis and Oshane Thomas didn’t appear for their fitness tests. It led Phil Simmons to come up with such a statement.
And now Andre Russell has responded to the statement. The all-rounder took to his Instagram handle and shared a screenshot of Simmons’s statement. He also wrote, “I know this was coming but am gonna stay quiet!!!” with “anger” and “clap” emojis.
Notably, the West Indies are not among the eight teams who have qualified for the T20 World Cup 2022. The Caribbean side will have to play the qualifiers to make it to the Super 12. They will have to finish the group at No. 1 or 2.
