ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – The West In­dies will have to do with­out the ser­vices of the num­ber two ranked T20 bowler in the world, Akeal Ho­sein for its first T20I against Eng­land on Fri­day in Durham, af­ter he failed to meet the UK visa re­quire­ments.

In a press re­lease is­sued on Fri­day, hours be­fore the open­ing T20I was set to bowl off, Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) re­vealed that both Ho­sein and Jyd Goolie failed to se­cure the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion fol­low­ing up­dat­ed UK visa en­try re­quire­ments for Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens, which came in­to ef­fect on April 23rd and May 12th, 2025.

The changes re­quired both play­ers to sub­mit visa ap­pli­ca­tions and at­tend manda­to­ry in-per­son ap­point­ments.

CWI said they had made for­mal ef­forts to ex­pe­dite the visa process for Ho­sein, who they hoped would be able join the team “in the com­ing days”.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the 28-year-old Goolie, who is yet to play for the West In­dies, was un­able to se­cure the re­quired visa waiv­er.

Due to Goolie’s un­avail­abil­i­ty, Ros­ton Chase, who was set to leave the UK to join the Test camp in Bar­ba­dos, will now stay for the en­tire T20 se­ries.

CWI’s Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe in ex­plain­ing the sit­u­a­tion, said they had done every­thing pos­si­ble to se­cure the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments for Ho­sein and Goolie.

“As soon as the up­dat­ed visa re­quire­ments were an­nounced, CWI be­gan the nec­es­sary ap­pli­ca­tion process­es. This was on­ly pos­si­ble af­ter Akeal re­turned to Trinidad, and fol­low­ing the con­fir­ma­tion of Jyd’s se­lec­tion to the Ire­land squad.

“Akeal, who was se­lect­ed for both the Eng­land and Ire­land legs of the tour, was grant­ed per­mis­sion to ful­fill his com­mit­ments with the ex­tend­ed Pak­istan Su­per League un­til mid-May, while Jyd was called up for the Ire­land se­ries af­ter Ros­ton Chase was named Test cap­tain on May 16,” Bas­come not­ed.

“Chase was set to leave the UK to join the Test camp in Bar­ba­dos, cre­at­ing an open­ing in the squad. How­ev­er, Jyd was un­able to se­cure the re­quired visa waiv­er, as the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od for Trinidad and To­ba­go res­i­dents had al­ready ex­pired.”

While CWI said those process­es were ul­ti­mate­ly gov­erned by UK im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties and re­main out­side of CWI’s con­trol, they re­mained op­ti­mistic the mat­ter will be re­solved in the com­ing days, al­low­ing Ho­sein to join the squad for the re­main­ing match­es.

West In­dies lose ground in ODI rank­ings af­ter de­feat to Eng­land

DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Jun 6, CMC – De­spite main­tain­ing their ninth po­si­tion in the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil’s (ICC) One Day In­ter­na­tion­al rank­ings, the West In­dies are in dan­ger of be­ing over­tak­en by Bangladesh fol­low­ing their 3-0 de­feat to Eng­land in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed ODI se­ries.

West In­dies en­tered the three-match se­ries against the eighth-ranked Eng­land trail­ing by just three points, but that gap has been ex­tend­ed to 11 points with Eng­land now on 88 points com­pared to the Windies’ 77 points.

West In­dies were trounced 3-0 by Eng­land in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed ODI se­ries

How­ev­er, the re­gion­al team now holds a slen­der one-point lead over the 10th ranked Bangladesh (76 points).

With Bangladesh set to take on Sri Lan­ka in three ODIs be­gin­ning on Ju­ly 2, vic­to­ry in the se­ries will see them leapfrog West In­dies in­to ninth po­si­tion.

The West In­dies’ next ODI se­ries is against Pak­istan, with the first match set to bowl off on Au­gust 8 at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Trinidad.