Sammy says Alzarri Joseph declined selection for the Pakistan Tests
Daren Sammy confirmed that Alzarri Joseph turned down his place in the West Indies squad, leaving the hosts without their in-form quick as the Brian Lara stadium staged its first Test.
Jul 25, 2026
West Indies started a home Test series against Pakistan on 25 July without the fast bowler who has been their most dangerous of the past two months, and the reason is not injury. Head coach Daren Sammy confirmed on the eve of the first Test in Tarouba that Alzarri Joseph turned down his place in the squad.
Sammy puts it plainly
Cricket West Indies had said only that Joseph was unavailable for selection due to personal reasons when the 15-man squad was announced on 23 July. Sammy went further when he faced the media in Trinidad. “Yeah, it is a big loss,” he said. “Mr Joseph has declined selection. That’s the reality of the situation. He was selected. I mean, he’s now coming from injury. And for reasons since, he has declined the selection.”
Asked what happens next for a centrally contracted player who says no to a national call, Sammy pushed it up the chain. “That is a decision that is way over my head,” he said. “I leave that with the directors to come up with whatever solutions.”
The absence stings because of how Joseph had been bowling. He took six wickets across the two Tests against Sri Lanka earlier in the season, then opened the one-day series against New Zealand with four for 41. He was on his way back from injury and hitting form at the right end of a long home summer.
Who bowls instead
Sammy was asked whether the attack he has left can do the job. “What I could tell you is that we have a bowling line-up that we’ve seen that could take 20 wickets,” he said. “That’s the first start to winning Test matches.” The pace department now runs through Shamar Joseph, Kemar Roach and Jayden Seales, with Justin Greaves and Keemo Paul offering seam options further down the order.
Roach brings the experience and Seales the control, while Shamar Joseph carries the sense that something might happen at any moment. It is a serviceable attack. It is also one that leans harder on each of them than it needed to.
The fresh face is at the spin end. Joshua Bishop, a left-arm orthodox spinner, earned a maiden Test call-up on the back of numbers that had become hard to ignore: 119 wickets in 25 first-class matches at 23.90, and 91 across the last three West Indies Championship seasons, more than anyone else in that stretch.
Kirk McKenzie is back too, picked for the first time since 2024 after John Campbell was ruled out with a left hamstring strain suffered during the New Zealand one-day series. The Jamaican left-hander made 323 runs in six innings at 64.60 in the most recent Championship season, so he does not arrive short of runs.
A first Test at the Lara stadium
The venue is new ground too. The Brian Lara Cricket Academy has staged one-day internationals since 2023 and five matches at the 2024 T20 World Cup, including a semi-final, but the five-day game had never been played there until this week. The series then moves to Queen’s Park Oval in Port of Spain for the second Test from 2 to 6 August, with both matches counting towards the World Test Championship.
West Indies come into it with something behind them for once. Roston Chase leads a side that took the Sri Lanka series 1-0 this month, ending a 23-year wait for a series win over them and giving the dressing room evidence that the rebuild points somewhere. Jomel Warrican is his deputy.
Pakistan arrive with questions of their own. Babar Azam is back in charge of the Test side after the board moved on from Shan Masood, whose tenure ended with a 2-0 defeat in Bangladesh in May, and they sit ninth in the current championship cycle. Caribbean pitches should suit their seamers better than the turning tracks that undid them there.
The bigger question
A player declining a Test cap is not a scandal on its own. Cricketers have private lives, and neither Joseph nor the board has spelled out what sits behind the decision. But it lands in a part of the game where player availability has been argued over for years, and West Indies have lost more of those arguments than most.
The practical effect is simple enough. A team trying to build on a rare series win has walked into a brand new Test venue without its best-performing fast bowler of the season, and now has to prove Sammy right about those 20 wickets.