KINGSTON, St Vincent, CMC – Former West Indies vice-captain Kirk Edwards has been handed the captaincy of Windward Islands Volcanoes for the first class championship which starts next week.
The 34-year-old, a former Barbados captain who played 17 Tests and 16 One-Day Internationals for West Indies, represented Volcanoes in the Regional Four-Day season for the first time during the last campaign, scoring 313 runs, including three half-centuries.
Edwards did not feature for a franchise during the 2016-17 season and had turned out for Jamaica Scorpions in the previous campaign.
He has not represented Barbados since the 2014-15 season when he scraped 59 runs in four matches for the traditional regional powerhouses.
Edwards was once tipped as a future great West Indies batsman after hitting two hundreds and a half-century in his first six Test innings.
But his career declined following a poor run of form on the 2012 tour of England and he never rediscovered the touch which had gained him his quick rise in West Indies cricket.
Edwards averages 33 with nine hundreds, and is on the brink of 5 000 first class runs.
He will lead a squad which will be missing marquee opener Devon Smith for the day/night first round match against four-time reigning champions Guyana Jaguars at the Darren Sammy Cricket Ground next week Thursday.
Smith is unavailable due to “personal reasons”, a Windwards board release said.
The squad will also be missing several other key players as batsman Sunil Ambris and fast bowler Sherman Lewis are on West Indies duty in Bangladesh, while the trio of Obed McCoy, Kesrick Williams and Kyle Mayers are all injured.
Batsman Tyrone Theophile, who led Volcanoes last season, has been included in the 13-man squad along with former West Indies off-spinner Shane Shillingford and 21-year-old batsman Roland Cato, who will be Edwards’s vice-captain.
Volcanoes finished one from bottom of the six-team championship last season and have not won the first class title in the modern era.
SQUAD – Kirk Edwards (captain), Roland Cato (vice-captain), Tyrone Theophile, Tarryck Gabriel, Kavem Hodge, Alick Athanaze, Denis Smith (wicketkeeper), Shane Shillingford, Audy Alexander, Ryan John, Delorn Johnson, Ray Jordan, Josh Thomas.
