West Indies fast bowler Jayden Seales will be unavailable for selection for any cricket until about April next year as he recovers from surgery to correct a left knee injury, Red Force coach David Furlonge confirmed on Tuesday.
Seales, who was rested for the second Test in the recent two-match series against Australia which West Indies lost, will therefore miss the Caribbean men’s tour of South Africa in March 2023 when the regional side two Tests, three One-Day Internationals and three T20 Internationals.
The 21-year-old pacer will also be ruled out of selection for the Red Force squad for Cricket West Indies’ (CWI) Regional Four-Day Championship starting in February.
“Jayden is injured right now and is probably out of cricket for about four months. He has a knee injury and had surgery. In four months, he should be able to come back and play. He has started rehab already,” Furlonge was quoted as saying in the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday newspaper.
Seales got his first Test cap at age 19 against South Africa in St. Lucia in June 2021. He became the youngest West Indian bowler in history to take five wickets in a Test match against Pakistan in Jamaica (5-55 in the second innings) to follow up his 3-70 in the first innings.
Furlonge said his absence from the national team for the upcoming four-day competition would be a big blow, as he also acknowledged that Trinidadian bowlers Anderson Phillip and Shannon Gabriel could also be selected for the South Africa tour.
He said this would leave the Red Force with “a very inexperienced fast bowling line-up”.
“So we are looking to see how best we can prepare fast bowlers. Plenty of the younger fast bowlers would have never played a three-day game, far less a four-day game. It will take a toll on them to be prepared on time.
“We’ve stepped up our work on our fast bowlers that we have available to get fit and bowl 15 overs in a day. We have to make sure we have the right reserves in place that we could put up a challenge. We’re making more demands of them and hopefully, they’re up for the challenge,” he said. (CMC)
