ROSEAU, Do­mini­ca – Crick­et West In­dies’ (CWI) Di­rec­tor of Crick­et, Miles Bas­combe has re­vealed that vet­er­an pac­er Ke­mar Roach is not in the West In­dies’ plans for the fu­ture.

The 36-year-old Bar­ba­di­an was not in­clud­ed in the 16-man squad to face Aus­tralia in a three-match Test se­ries, which bowls off on Wednes­day at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

Along with reg­u­lar fast bowlers Jay­den Seales, Alzarri Joseph, and Shamar Joseph, se­lec­tors opt­ed to go with un­capped 21-year-old Jo­hann Layne as the fourth seam­er in the at­tack.

Roach’s 284 wick­ets in 85 match­es makes him the fifth-high­est wick­et-tak­er for the West In­dies in Tests.

He has al­so played in 95 One Day In­ter­na­tion­als where he has tak­en 125 wick­ets.

There were re­ports last year that Roach was in dis­cus­sions with CWI re­gard­ing a po­ten­tial dual play­ing and coach­ing/men­tor­ship role as he plans the next stage of his ca­reer.

How­ev­er, speak­ing in a re­cent in­ter­view on QFM Do­mini­ca, Bas­combe said while Roach had made a tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tion to West In­dies crick­et, he be­lieved now was the best time to move on.

He said he and head coach Daren Sam­my had spo­ken with Roach about their plans to move for­ward with­out him.

“Ke­mar has been ex­cel­lent for West In­dies and we had the con­ver­sa­tion with him, and we spoke to him and we let him know the di­rec­tion that we want­ed to go.

“It was no slight on what he has done for West In­dies crick­et, but again, we are plan­ning World Test Cham­pi­onship 2027 on to 2029 and at some point, we have to be able to re­al­ly put down some mark­ers that we have plan­ning for the fu­ture,” Bas­combe said.

“It wasn’t the eas­i­est of con­ver­sa­tions to have and it’s dif­fi­cult in one breath to tell some­one that you’re mov­ing on, but in the same breath try to get them to un­der­stand that it’s no slight on their con­tri­bu­tion to West In­dies crick­et.

“But like I said, I just want­ed to en­sure that we had that con­ver­sa­tion out of re­spect for what he did. So, my­self, the head coach, we were part of that dis­cus­sion, but I think that at some point we had to move on and at the start of a new Test Cham­pi­onship is as good a time as any,” he added.

CMC