West In­dies’ young pac­er Jay­den Seales is ex­pect­ed to make a full re­turn to com­pe­ti­tion with­in the next cou­ple of weeks with new fran­chise Para­keet Buc­ca­neers who picked him up in the draft for the fourth edi­tion of the Dream XI T10 Trinidad Blast Tour­na­ment.

Buc­ca­neers one of two new fran­chis­es an­nounced Seales as one of their five Mar­quee play­ers be­fore Mon­day’s of­fi­cial draft took place at the Al­loy Lequay Ad­min­is­tra­tion Cen­tre of the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre at Bal­main, Cou­va. The oth­er new club is Ruget­ters.

The oth­er four play­ers were Evin Lewis, Kjorn Ot­t­ley, Christopheer Vin­cent and Leonar­do Julien.

Each team will com­prise The team com­prise 14 play­ers at the eight-team tour­na­ment sched­uled to be played from June 9 to 24 at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my at Tarou­ba.

Seales, 21, has tak­en 37 Test wick­ets at an av­er­age of 24.24, be­fore he re­quired surgery fol­low­ing a torn menis­cus in his left knee dur­ing the Test tour of Aus­tralia which the Windies lost 2-0 in 2022/23.

Seales played the first game in Perth in No­vem­ber/De­cem­ber, bowl­ing 21 overs in the first in­nings and grab­bing one for 95. He bowled just three in the sec­ond in­nings and did not fea­ture in the sec­ond match, which was a day/night Test in Ade­laide.

He was set to join Sus­sex in the Coun­ty Cham­pi­onship and T20 Blast com­pe­ti­tions but had to be re­placed.

Al­so, high­light­ed in the draft was the an­nounce­ment that the play­ers will get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play crick­et in the Unit­ed States.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, West In­dies Men Lead se­lec­tor, the Most Ho­n­ourable Dr Desmond Haynes said that while the play­er was con­sid­ered for the on-go­ing A-Team tour of Bangladesh as well as the ICC Men’s World Cup Qual­i­fiers to im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low, a de­ci­sion was tak­en not to rush the fast bowler back in­to ac­tion.

He ex­plained that, “What I can say about Jay­den that we did con­sid­er him and then were told not to rush Jay­den know­ing that we are go­ing in­to a Test se­ries against In­dia here in the next cou­ple of months and we would like Jay­den to re­cov­er ful­ly so that he can fea­ture in the se­ries against In­dia.”

Mean­while, speak­ing on be­half of Crick­et Coun­cil USA and its pres­i­dent Muham­mad Ahmed Qureshi was crick­et com­men­ta­tor/pro­duc­er Vin­ode Mam­chan who re­vealed that dis­cus­sions have been on­go­ing be­tween CCUSA and the T&T Crick­et Board.

“The ob­jec­tive is to deep­en ties be­tween both or­ga­ni­za­tions and of­fer more op­por­tu­ni­ties for the crick­eters who ex­cel in the Dream XI T10 Trinidad Blast. CCUSA or­ga­nizes sev­er­al com­pe­ti­tions all around the con­ti­nen­tal USA so it is some­thing for the crick­eters to work to­wards,” said Mam­chan.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­gag­ing in oth­er crick­et-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties with CCUSA was con­firmed by TTCB pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath who is al­so the new­ly elect­ed un­op­posed vice-pres­i­dent of Crick­et West In­dies.

Ear­li­er this year Bas­sarath host­ed CCUSA pres­i­dent Qureshi on a tour of the Bal­main fa­cil­i­ty and the suc­cess­ful Pak­istani-born Amer­i­can en­tre­pre­neur left very im­pressed with a pledge to ce­ment crick­et ties.

At Mon­day’s draft, rep­re­sen­ta­tives ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the process used to fi­nal­ize their 14-mem­ber squad with Fides Lim­it­ed Scar­let Ibis Scorchers, So­ca Kings, and Steel­pan Play­ers quin­tet of re­tained play­ers com­ing away well po­si­tioned.

Steel­pan Play­ers have in their line-up ex­pe­ri­enced spin­ner Im­ran Khan, for­mer West In­dies cap­tain/wick­et­keep­er De­nesh Ramdin, Red Force bats­man Jyd Goolie and young bats­man Isa­iah Ra­jah.

The So­ca Kings will be re­ly­ing on sol­id mid­dle-or­der bats­man Ja­son Mo­hammed, IPL’s Kolkata Knight Rid­ers mys­tery spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine, and bat­ting prodi­gy Kirstan Kallicha­ran.

Fides Lim­it­ed Scar­let Ibis Scorchers ap­pears on pa­per a com­bi­na­tion to put them in con­tention with the trio of na­tion­al crick­eters com­pris­ing spin­ners Khary Pir­erre and Bryan Charles, all­rounder Tion Web­ster along with Kamil Pooran who has im­pressed this sea­son with the bat.