ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – For ten long months, Alzarri Joseph watched from a dis­tance. The game moved on. His team­mates bat­tled with­out him. And all the fast bowler could do was sit, re­cov­er, and wait.

That wait is fi­nal­ly over. With a home se­ries loom­ing this sum­mer, the 29-year-old pac­er has re­joined the se­nior men’s squad af­ter be­ing side­lined since late 2025 with a low­er back in­jury.

Just 72 hours back among his peers, Joseph is al­ready show­ing signs of set­tling in at the on­go­ing high-per­for­mance white-ball camp at Coolidge Crick­et Ground.

“It feels good,” Joseph said. Ob­vi­ous­ly had a bit of a lay-off through in­jury, so it’s good to be back play­ing and play­ing with the squad. It’s been a bit chal­leng­ing, but good, be­cause I feel a bit stronger, feel a lit­tle bit fit­ter. I think I’m go­ing well so far.”

The road back was any­thing but easy. Joseph, who holds the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the youngest West In­di­an to take a five-wick­et haul in One Day In­ter­na­tion­als (ODI) and the fastest to reach 100 ODI wick­ets, ad­mit­ted the men­tal toll of watch­ing from afar was se­vere, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter miss­ing the 2026 T20 World Cup in In­dia and Sri Lan­ka.

“It was very chal­leng­ing, a tough pe­ri­od, hav­ing to sit down, not be­ing able to help the team, not be­ing able to con­tribute in any way pos­si­ble,” he said. “I had to get through my re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, my strength­en­ing and con­di­tion­ing to get back in­to peak form to per­form.”

De­spite the records al­ready at­tached to his name, Joseph in­sists he is far from a fin­ished prod­uct.

“To be hon­est, for me, you can al­ways im­prove, you can al­ways get bet­ter. I don’t think that I’m ever at my best. There are skills I can im­prove on. I’m in good shape, but there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment.”

The An­tiguan al­so voiced con­fi­dence in the West In­dies’ fast-bowl­ing unit, fea­tur­ing Jay­den Seales, Shamar Joseph and Matthew Forde, be­liev­ing they have the right mix of tal­ent, en­er­gy and ag­gres­sion to make a ma­jor im­pact start­ing this sum­mer.

“We want to be the best in the world,” Joseph said. “It’s go­ing to take time and work, but the game is evolv­ing, so we must evolve with it. We need to un­der­stand what is re­quired as fast bowlers to go out and pro­duce per­for­mances that will make the Caribbean peo­ple proud.”

For Joseph, win­ning is every­thing, but leav­ing a lega­cy mat­ters just as much.

“I play to win, by any means nec­es­sary, fair­ly. I want to get to World Cups, chal­lenge for World Cups, and take West In­dies crick­et to high­er rank­ings,” he said. “I don’t want to re­tire and not leave this team in a bet­ter po­si­tion than when I came in. I wouldn’t feel ac­com­plished.”

The CWI high-per­for­mance camp runs from May 21-31 ahead of the lim­it­ed-overs se­ries against Sri Lan­ka, which be­gins June 3 at Sabi­na Park.

CMC