BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - NEVISIAN batsman Kieran Powell has been dropped by the West Indies for the second Test against New Zealand in Trinidad starting on Monday (Jun. 16).
In a release yesterday (Jun 13), the West Indies Cricket Board announced a 13-man squad with Powell and Jamaican batsman Marlon Samuels being the only exclusions from the second Test and the uncapped Jermaine Blackwood of Jamaica and Leon Johnson of Guyana would be their replacements.
Powell made 28 and 0 in the first Test and has consistently failed to convert his regular starts into big runs.
According to ESPNcricinfo, he passed 20 in eight of his last 15 innings but has a high score of 48 in that period.
Samuels was dropped after he made two ducks in West Indies' 186-run defeat in the first Test at Sabina Park. He was dismissed second ball both times, and has only three scores above 20 in his last 12 innings.
ESPNcricinfo also reports Blackwood, a 22-year-old, has played 16 First Class matches and averages 40.38, with three hundreds and six half-centuries. He scored two centuries for the High Performance Team in recent matches against Bangladesh A. Blackwood also scored 94 and 118 in the final of the 2014 regional four-day competition against Windward Islands.
Johnson, 26, played three ODIs for West Indies in 2008, against Bermuda and Canada, but has not appeared in an international since then. The Guyanese batsman scored three half-centuries in the two matches against Bangladesh A.
