Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard picked as World Cup reserves

Dwayne Bravo officially retired from international cricket in 2018 © Getty

Cricket West Indies have sprung a surprise by naming veteran allrounder Dwayne Bravo among their World Cup reserves. Bravo had announced his retirement from international cricket last year but might fly to England in case of an injury to any member in the already announced provisional 15-man West Indies squad. The 35-year-old, who has had disputes with the cricket board in the past, last played for the West Indies in September 2016 in the T20 format against Pakistan.

He has also not played an ODI in more than four years with his last appearance coming in October 2014 in India where he was also the captain of the side that had to return home midway following a fallout with the board. However, he did feature in the Super50, West Indies's domestic one-day competition, last year where his side went out in the semifinal.

Apart from Bravo, the other big name to have been included in the ten-man list is Kieron Pollard. The batting allrounder recently won the IPL title with Mumbai Indians and has been in pretty good nick. Even though he has been making regular appearances in the T20 format, Pollard too hasn't represented West Indies in a while in one-day cricket, with his most recent appearance coming in October 2016.

Sunil Ambris, John Campbell, Jonathan Carter, Roston Chase, Shane Dowrich, Keemo Paul, Khary Pierre and Raymon Reifer are the other players named in the reserves list. Out of these ten, Ambris and Reifer will join the World Cup squad as cover during their training camp in Southampton that begins on May 19. Ambris had impressed in the recently-concluded tri-series in Ireland, scoring a century and a half-century. With Evin Lewis just recently recovering from a viral infection, Ambris will provide cover for the left-handed batsman while Reifer has been called up in order to ease the workload of the seam attack.

As part of the training camp, West Indies will also play an additional warm-up match at the Ageas Bowl against defending champions Australia.

"We are very grateful to Hampshire CCC for agreeing to host us at the Ageas Bowl and to Cricket Australia for agreeing the additional warm-up game," CWI CEO Johnny Grave said. "Due to the commitments and promises made, to both our players and the BCCI, this is the first time that our entire World Cup squad can get together since the IPL finished. We are confident that these additional five days of training and the extra warm-up game will mean that our players will be ready to perform at their best in our opening match against Pakistan on the 31st May."