ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – West In­dies bid to win their third ICC Men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup and be­come the first team to do it on home soil hit a snag when all-rounder Ja­son Hold­er was ruled out of the tour­na­ment be­cause of an in­jury.

Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) did not spec­i­fy the in­jury or the length of re­cov­ery time the 32-year-old Bar­ba­di­an will re­quire, but they in­di­cat­ed that left-arm fast bowler Obed Mc­Coy will be his re­place­ment in the fi­nal 15-mem­ber squad for the glob­al show­piece, start­ing on June 1 in the Caribbean and the Unit­ed States.

All the teams in the World Cup named pro­vi­sion­al squads ear­li­er this month and had un­til Sat­ur­day to make changes, af­ter which they will re­quire ap­proval from the tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee of the tour­na­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the CWI me­dia re­lease an­nounc­ing the fi­nal squad, Hold­er suf­fered the in­jury dur­ing his five-match stint for Worces­ter­shire in the Eng­lish Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship in April-May.

“Ja­son is an ex­pe­ri­enced play­er in our set-up,” lead se­lec­tor Desmond Haynes, the for­mer Bar­ba­dos open­er and West In­dies cap­tain said.

“His ab­sence will un­doubt­ed­ly be felt both on and off the field. We look for­ward to hav­ing a ful­ly fit Ja­son with us again soon.”

Haynes added: “While it is un­for­tu­nate to lose a play­er of Ja­son’s cal­i­bre, we are con­fi­dent in the abil­i­ties of Obed Mc­Coy.

“Obed has shown re­mark­able skill and promise in his per­for­mances, and this op­por­tu­ni­ty will al­low him to fur­ther show­case his tal­ent on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. We be­lieve he will bring a fresh and dy­nam­ic en­er­gy to the squad.”

Mc­Coy is part of the West In­dies side that leads South Africa 2-0 in a three-match, Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al warm-up se­ries that comes to an end on Sun­day and has been played ex­clu­sive­ly at Sabi­na Park in the Ja­maica cap­i­tal of Kingston.

He was the top wick­et-tak­er for West In­dies “A” on their Tour of Nepal in April-May when he col­lect­ed eight wick­ets in five match­es at an av­er­age of 18.

Mc­Coy will add a tinge more ex­pe­ri­ence to a pace bowl­ing at­tack led by vice-cap­tain Alzarri Joseph and Guyanese rook­ie Shamar Joseph, with new­ly crowned IPL cham­pi­on, An­dre Rus­sell and fel­low all-rounder Ro­mario Shep­herd for sup­port.

CWI al­so named the five re­serves – left-arm spin­ner Fabi­an Allen, wick­et­keep­er-bats­man An­dre Fletch­er, pac­er Matthew Forde, am­bidex­trous all-rounder Kyle May­ers, and leg-spin­ner Hay­den Walsh Jr – from which Haynes and head coach Daren Sam­my will choose in case of in­jury or ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stance.

“We are for­tu­nate to have such depth and qual­i­ty in our ranks,” Haynes said. “Our re­serve play­ers are all A-class tal­ents who have proven their abil­i­ties in var­i­ous for­mats of the game, but cer­tain­ly T20. Each one of them is ful­ly ca­pa­ble of slot­ting in­to the team seam­less­ly should the sit­u­a­tion arise.”

West In­dies will play in Group “C” of the World Cup with Afghanistan and New Zealand, and two ICC As­so­ciate teams – Papua New Guinea and Ugan­da.

Their first two match­es in the tour­na­ment will be at the Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um, where they face the Papuans on June 2 and take on the Ugan­dans six days lat­er.

The Caribbean side will com­plete the group stage against New Zealand on June 12 at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Trinidad and Afghanistan five days lat­er at the venue named af­ter their head coach in his home­land of St Lu­cia.

Be­fore the tour­na­ment, the co-hosts will face Aus­tralia this com­ing Thurs­day in an of­fi­cial warm-up match at the Queen’s Park Oval in the Trinidad cap­i­tal of Port of Spain, start­ing at 7 p.m. East Caribbean Time.

West In­dies are a two-time cham­pi­on of the tour­na­ment, hav­ing won in 2012 in Sri Lan­ka and 2016 in In­dia un­der the lead­er­ship of Sam­my and the guid­ance of coach­es Ot­tis Gib­son and Phil Sim­mons.

Squad:

Rov­man Pow­ell (cap­tain), Alzarri Joseph (vice-cap­tain), John­son Charles, Ros­ton Chase, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Shai Hope, Akeal Ho­sein, Shamar Joseph, Bran­don King, Obed Mc­Coy, Gu­dakesh Motie, Nicholas Pooran, An­dre Rus­sell, Sher­fane Ruther­ford, Ro­mario Shep­herd.

Re­serves:

Fabi­an Allen, An­dre Fletch­er, Matthew Forde, Kyle May­ers, Hay­den Walsh Jr.

CMC