JO­HAN­NES­BURG–An up­set Chris Gayle has blast­ed the omis­sion of Dwayne Bra­vo and Kieron Pol­lard from the West In­dies squad for next month's World Cup as "ridicu­lous", and says it smacks of vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

Speak­ing af­ter fir­ing West In­dies to an his­toric vic­to­ry in the sec­ond Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al against South Africa at the Wan­der­ers on Sun­day, the mav­er­ick open­er lashed out at se­lec­tors for ax­ing the all-rounders, ar­gu­ing the move weak­ened the one-day side.

"How can those two guys not be in the team? To me it got to be like vic­tim­i­sa­tion when you look at it to­wards those two guys," Gayle rant­ed.

"Come on, guys. It is just ridicu­lous. Come on. Ridicu­lous. [I'm] re­al­ly hurt. Ridicu­lous. Hon­est­ly, it throw me off. We can on­ly talk. We can ex­press our feel­ings, which I'm do­ing at this point in time. The squad al­ready is an­nounced. It is just sad."

The claim of vic­tim­i­sa­tion is in ref­er­ence to the role Pol­lard and Bra­vo played on the con­tro­ver­sial aban­doned tour of In­dia when the one-day team abrupt­ly quit the se­ries over a con­tracts dis­pute with their play­ers union, WIPA.

Bra­vo, the one-day skip­per at the time, led the fight for the play­ers against WIPA and the West In­dies Crick­et Board, as the play­ers spokesman.

Pol­lard, mean­while, was one of the se­nior mem­bers.

In se­lect­ing the squad for South Africa and the World Cup, West In­dies se­lec­tors said they were look­ing to re­build the squad, nam­ing rook­ie fast bowler Ja­son Hold­er as the new cap­tain.

And on Sun­day, WICB pres­i­dent Dave Cameron re­ject­ed claims Pol­lard and Bra­vo had been vic­timised, con­tend­ing the squads had been se­lect­ed on a crick­et­ing ba­sis on­ly.

A fu­ri­ous Gayle said, how­ev­er, the strength of the one-day side would be im­pact­ed by the move.

"It is a big bat­ting line-up when you look at our team. But it's just dis­ap­point­ing when you look at the 50-over for­mat � we won't be at our strongest," Gayle said.

"We don't have our strongest team with­out Pol­lard, nor Bra­vo. So that is ac­tu­al­ly sad for us. It is a re­al­ly big blow for us to ac­tu­al­ly lose two key play­ers, two key all-rounders as well, very good in the out­field.

"I don't know what's the his­to­ry be­hind it, but it is a ridicu­lous se­lec­tion from my point of view."

He added: "I don't know where our crick­et is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to ... where we are head­ing with this sort of sit­u­a­tion. But it is re­al­ly sad. Ac­tu­al­ly we won the [Twen­ty20] se­ries with our best team and now there will be changes, with two of our biggest play­ers in ODI crick­et not in­volved in the 50-over for­mat and the World Cup.

"It re­al­ly hurts but I'm re­al­ly, re­al­ly glad that we won the se­ries for Pol­lard and Bra­vo."

West In­dies pulled off the high­est run chase in Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als to beat South Africa by four wick­ets with four balls to spare here Sun­day, and take a win­ning 2-0 lead in the three-match se­ries.

Gayle smashed a top score of 90 from 41 balls to record his sec­ond half-cen­tu­ry and Man-of-the-Match award in the space of three days.