Sunil Narine wins West Indies call

 
31 May 2012

West Indies have called up mystery spinner Sunil Narine after Kemar Roach was ruled out of the rest of the England tour due to a shin injury.

The West Indies Cricket Board confirmed that 23-year-old paceman Roach has left the squad to return home.

In his place comes Narine, who is uncapped at Test level but has attracted plenty of attention due to his off-spin variety.

The 24-year-old has taken 14 wickets in eight one-day internationals and has enjoyed a successful Indian Premier League campaign with winners Kolkata Knight Riders.

Narine opted to play in the lucrative competition in India instead of the Test series with Australia and England, and took 24 wickets at an average of 13.50 and an economy rate of 5.47 from 15 matches.

West Indies face one further Test, starting on June 7 at Edgbaston, tour matches against Leicestershire and Middlesex, three one-day internationals and a Twenty20 international on their tour.

Roach played in the opening two Tests of the three-match series as England established an unassailable 2-0 lead.

A WICB statement announced: "Roach has been sidelined with shin muscle soreness and will return home to Barbados to allow this to heal before starting a bowling programme again."

Team physiotherapist CJ Clark said: "Kemar has been carrying this soreness for the last two matches, and in view of our upcoming schedule, we would like him to have the time to recover and prevent the onset of more serious injury.

"It is always important to balance workload with the body's ability to repair, and I think it judicious to protect Kemar at this time."

Coach Ottis Gibson was "gutted" to lose a key member of the bowling attack, but admitted the decision was taken with a longer-term view.

Gibson said: "We still have an awful lot of cricket to play this year and we did not want to risk losing as valuable a player as Kemar for a long period.

"He has been outstanding with the ball for us so far this year and we are all gutted by his departure.

"Kemar made a lot of improvements, after enduring a tough time last year, and gave us some world-class performances during the series against Australia and here in England."

Roach took eight wickets at 34.25 in the Tests against England, and Tino Best and Fidel Edwards are vying for his place, together with Narine.

Gibson added on www.windiescricket.com: "We believe that a very excited Tino and a fit-again Fidel will be able to provide us with the spark that we will miss from Roach's absence.

"We still have an awful lot for which to play in the final Test, and Tino and Fidel can give us the cutting edge to our bowling if they play."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in