A first tour call-up for Bready seam bowler Craig Young and a return to the senior fold for Clontarf's Andrew Poynter pointed to the fact that Ireland coach Phil Simmons still sees form as the key determinant in naming his squad for the upcoming trip to the West Indies.
Ireland will take part in the Nagico Super50, the premier one-day competition in the Caribbean, on Simmons’s home island of Trinidad before moving on to Jamaica where they will play the West Indies in two Twenty20 and a One-Day International at Sabina Park in Kingston.
Simmons has named a 15-man squad for the tour, although batsman Ed Joyce will only take part in the games in Jamaica as part of managing his ongoing hip problems ahead of a hectic schedule in the coming year.
Young, 23, has been on the books with Joyce at Sussex and the 23-year-old spent some of the winter working with Australia bowling coach Craig McDermott in Brisbane along with fellow Irish bowlers Graeme McCarter and Peter Chase.
Simmons admitted that Young’s “edge in terms of extra pace would be a useful asset in the West Indies” and signalled out centuries for Leinster in the interprovincial series and a match-winning ton for Clontarf in the RSA All-Ireland Senior Cup Final as key in a return for 26-year-old Poynter, who won the last of his 44 caps in 2012.
IRELAND (Squad for tour of West Indies): W Porterfield (Warwickshire, capt), A Cusack (Clontarf), G Dockrell (Somerset), E Joyce (Sussex), J Mooney (North County), T Murtagh (Middlesex), A McBrine (Donemana), K O'Brien (Railway Union), N O'Brien (Leicestershire), A Poynter (Clontarf), M Sorensen (The Hills), P Stirling (Middlesex), S Thompson (Eglinton), G Wilson (Surrey), Cr Young (Bready).
