St John's [Antigua], October 4 (ANI): Cricket West Indies (CWI) has announced Shamarh Brooks as the replacement of explosive middle-order batter Shimron Hetmyer in the squad for ICC T20 World Cup 2022 after the latter missed his re-scheduled flight to Australia.

"Cricket West Indies (CWI) has today informed the International Cricket Council (ICC) that Shamarh Brooks has replaced Shimron Hetmyer in the West Indies Squad for the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup in Australia," said CWI in a statement.

The decision by the CWI Selection Panel was made as Shimron Hetmyer missed his re-scheduled flight to Australia, which had been changed from Saturday, October 1, at his request, due to family reasons. With flight availability a real challenge, a seat was found for him to leave Guyana today, Monday, October 3, meaning he would, unfortunately, miss the 1st T20 International (T20I) against Australia on Wednesday, October 5 at the Metricon Stadium.

This morning, Hetmyer, informed the Director of Cricket Jimmy Adams that he would not be able to get to the airport in time for his flight this afternoon to New York.

"This afternoon we informed the CWI Board of Directors that the Selection Panel had unanimously decided to replace Shimron Hetmyer with Shamarh Brooks in our T20 World Cup squad. Whilst we changed Shimron's flight from Saturday to Monday due to family reasons, it was made clear to him that if there were any further delays and issues with his travel to Australia then we would have no choice but to replace him in the squad, as we are not prepared to compromise the team's ability to prepare for this extremely important global event," said Adams.

"Shamarh has been a part of our recent T20 International squads and delivered strong performances in the latter stages of the recently concluded CPL. He will fly out as soon as possible this week to Australia and I wish him and all the squad all the very best for the tournament," he added.

West Indies will begin their T20 World Cup campaign against Scotland from October 17 onwards. They are a part of Group B with Scotland, Zimbabwe and Ireland. Last year, the Windies were eliminated from the tournament in the Super 12 phase.

West Indies: Nicholas Pooran (c), Rovman Powell, Yannic Cariah, Johnson Charles, Sheldon Cottrell, Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, Alzarri Joseph, Brandon King, Evin Lewis, Kyle Mayers, Obed Mccoy, Raymon Reifer, Odean Smith, Shamarh Brooks. (ANI)