Two Dominican cricketers have been selected for the West Indies Cricket squad to play against United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Sharjah. West Indies Cricket announced on Thursday that Alick Athanaze and Kavem Hodge will form part of the team for the matches to be played on June 5, 7, and 9.
Lead Selector for the West Indies team Dr Desmond Haynes said the matches will give the cricketers the opportunity for exposure on the international level. “For the matches against the UAE in Sharjah, this presents a chance for some other players who are not in the squad for the qualifiers, to get an opportunity at the international level as we look to expose more players,” he said.
According to West Indies Cricket, the matches will also form part of the preparations for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 Qualifiers in Zimbabwe. The two Dominicans were not named for the Qualifiers. Athanaze has been dubbed “the little magician from Dominica” by West Indies Cricket and labelled as the rising star in West Indies cricket by the International Cricket Council.
He was also selected for a 15-member West Indies team to face South Africa in two-Test Series in February and March this year.
Hodge has played with St Lucia Zouks, Combined Campus & Colleges (CCC), UWI CaveHill Blackbirds, Dominica Senior Team, Windward Islands Volcanoes, and West Indies under 19 team. He has been the lead scorer in many regional competitions.
In December 2020, he was named to the West Indies squad for their Test series against Bangladesh.
The full team for the match is as follows:
Shai Hope (captain)
Brandon King (vice captain)
Alick Athanaze
Shamarh Brooks
Yannic Cariah
Keacy Carty
Roston Chase
Dominic Drakes
Kavem Hodge
Akeem Jordan
Gudakesh Motie
Keemo Paul
Raymon Reifer
Odean Smith
Devon Thomas
Congratulations young men, Hodge and Athanaze. Your hard work and dedication to perfection once again proves that luck is when preparation meets opportunities. I wish you great continued success going forward.
Life as a pro Athlete have it’s pros & cons, the need is to put their heads down and manifest. Seeing them in Trinidad recently, the quality is abounded, some of us are reminded of a glorious past.
This is just so amazing to see rising sports men form Dominica . congratulations young men. Stay close to God,.stay humble stay focused .you have gone this far so you can do it cudoos to you both and good success 👍👍 God bless and be safe.
Congratulations Kavem & Alick. Go out there and do your best.
It’s Odean Smith for me. I wonder what he has going for him other than the smile.
How does Athanaze, the leading runscorer and most outstanding batsmen in the recently concluded West Indies Regional 4 Day Championships, not feature in the starting line-up of either or both of the Regional Test or ODI team?
It’s not like the current Windies lineup is teeming with world beater batsmen. Aside from Braithwaite, Hope, DaSilva and maybe Chase, you can put the rest of the so called batsmen in a barrel and the scoreboard would not miss a tick.
I will venture to add that if Athanaze and Hodge were from another more easterly island where deserving and undeserving cricketers have a pipeline to the West Indies Senior teams then they would have cemented a place in the team a long time ago.
The two crooks on the sports programme on the fake news radio station are MAD two Dominicans are on the West indies team.Programme after programme,these two traitors would talk about foreign cricketers and not about Kavem Hodge and Alick Athanaze.Those aholes would start the sports programme with politics especially the big mouth one.They are also MAD test cricket is coming to Dominica in a stadium built by Roosevelt Skerrit.Congratulation to Mr.Kavem Hodge and Mr.Alick Athanaze,I hope and pray that they play India as members of the senior men’s team. For the first time two Dominicans are representing the West indies cricket team at the same time.
Congratulation to you guys make me proud.
That’s good news. Hope both of them can play and of course, pile on good scores!!
I don’t see the point in making the squad and not getting picked for the actual games. That’s the only way they can get international cricket experience. Both of these players have proven themselves that they can play top level cricket but they are still being sidelined despite the fact that the ones picked ahead of them continue to disappoint. Petti insularity is what killing West Indies cricket.
Do you remember how long/many times Brian Lara was on the team before he actually played?