ST JOHN’S – Pow­er­ful all-rounder An­dre Rus­sell, along with open­ers Lendl Sim­mons and Evin Lewis, have opt­ed out of the Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al tour of New Zealand, Crick­et West In­dies con­firmed Fri­day.

The trio were not part of a 14-man squad named for the three-match se­ries from No­vem­ber 27-30, with em­bat­tled off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine and vet­er­an su­per­star Chris Gayle al­so miss­ing the trip next month.

“Lendl Sim­mons de­clined the op­por­tu­ni­ty to tour at this time af­ter dis­cus­sions with his fam­i­ly,” con­venor of se­lec­tors, Roger Harp­er, told a me­dia con­fer­ence Fri­day.

“Evin Lewis the same as well as he says he still has an in­jury that is trou­bling him and An­dre Rus­sell said that he wasn’t re­al­ly han­dling the whole thing (play­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic) very well and need­ed some time to clear his head and get him­self to­geth­er.

“He’s been go­ing from one lock­down (bio-se­cure bub­ble) so to speak, to an­oth­er.”

Nar­ine, mean­while, who was last week re­port­ed for a sus­pect bowl­ing ac­tion dur­ing the In­di­an Pre­mier League, was over­looked for the tour along with Gayle, who made his first ap­pear­ance in a com­pet­i­tive game in 10 months on Thurs­day in the IPL.

De­spite their ab­sences, Harp­er said both were still in the plans of se­lec­tors go­ing for­ward, es­pe­cial­ly with the T20 World Cup on the hori­zon.

“Sunil is an ex­pe­ri­enced play­er. We all know what [he] is ca­pa­ble of,” Harp­er not­ed.

“He’s a world class per­former and I think that he un­der­stands the process of get­ting through these chal­lenges be­cause he’s done it in the past and we know that Sunil can do.

“As we build up to the T20 World Cup [next year] when Sunil is ready and avail­able, fil­ly fit and every­thing is in sync, he’ll be con­sid­ered.”

He con­tin­ued: “We picked the squad that we thought was the right one for this tour. Chris Gayle, like Sunil Nar­ine, is a world class play­er. We know what he is ca­pa­ble of so go­ing for­ward he will be con­sid­ered and is be­ing con­sid­ered.”

The ab­sence of the five will rob West In­dies of valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence but has paved the way for the maid­en se­lec­tion of at­tack­ing left-hand­ed all-rounder Kyle May­ers, and the re­turn of vet­er­an bats­man An­dre Fletch­er.

May­ers carved out 654 runs at an av­er­age of 50 dur­ing the re­cent first class sea­son but al­so shone for Bar­ba­dos Pride dur­ing last month’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) in T&T.

The 32-year-old Fletch­er, who has not fea­tured for West In­dies in two years, pro­duced handy knocks dur­ing the CPL to pro­pel St Lu­cia Zouks to the fi­nal.

Sev­en play­ers, in­clud­ing cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard, are cur­rent­ly cam­paign­ing in the IPL and will join the re­main­der of the West In­dies tour­ing par­ty in New Zealand af­ter com­plet­ing their fran­chise com­mit­ments.

Harp­er ac­knowl­edged that the tour would not al­low for prop­er match prepa­ra­tion but backed the play­ers to use their ex­pe­ri­ence.

“The T20I Team is now get­ting back in­to the groove af­ter a nine-month ab­sence from in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

“For­tu­nate­ly, a num­ber of play­ers have been in­volved in the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) and be­fore that the CPL, so they have had some com­pet­i­tive crick­et lead­ing up to this tour.

“The struc­ture of the tour with the COVID-19 quar­an­tine pe­ri­od, does not give the team any re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for match prac­tice as a team but there are a num­ber of ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers in the team so, hope­ful­ly, they can adapt quick­ly.”

West In­dies open the se­ries at Eden Park in Auck­land on No­vem­ber 27 be­fore play­ing back-to-back match­es at Bay Oval in Mount Maun­ganui start­ing two days lat­er.

SQUAD – Kieron Pol­lard (cap­tain), Fabi­an Allen, Dwayne Bra­vo, Shel­don Cot­trell, An­dre Fletch­er, Shim­ron Het­my­er, Bran­don King, Kyle May­ers, Rov­man Pow­ell, Keemo Paul, Nicholas Pooran, Os­hane Thomas, Hay­den Walsh Jr, Kesrick Williams.