Philippine Cricket Association (PCA) have announced their 14-member men’s national squad (a.k.a Carabos) for the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Global Qualifiers in Oman from February 15th – 25th, 2022. The Philippine team will be competing in the 8-nation qualifiers in a bid to secure one of the two available qualification spots into the first round of 2022 Men’s T20 World Cup in Australia, for which the groupings and the schedule has been announced.
The Philippines have qualified for the global event from the East Asia-Pacific (EAP) region, the qualifiers for which in 2021 was cancelled due to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and were awarded the spot on virtue of their performance in the previous EAP qualifiers held in March 2019 in Papua New Guinea, where they registered a win over Vanuatu and with the other game between the countries getting abandoned due to weather, enabled them to finish above Vanuatu in the points table. Philippines have a scheduled warm-up fixture against Bahrain in the lead-up to the main draw of the tournament.
The Philippine Carabaos squad members were restricted to training programs within the scopes allowed under the government protocols due to COVID-19, both based within the Philippines and overseas (Australia). The squad has not had any opportunity to train as a team due to the restrictions, but some of the players based in Philippines got to get some domestic game-time in December 2021, when the Iain Sinclair Memorial T10 tournament was held.
The overseas based players including Captain Jonathan Hill (2022/2022 season – 5 matches, 51 runs, 5 wickets) have had game-time in the grade-level cricket competitions and other arranged fixtures in Australia. Other players based in Australia includes the likes of Hernie Isorena (2021/2022 season – 9 matches, 107 runs) playing for Seddon Cricket Club, Miggy Podosky (2021/2022 season – 13 matches, 22 runs, 11 wickets) playing for Bendigo United Cricket Club, Grant Russ (2021/2022 season – 6 matches, 15 runs, 7 wickets) playing for Bracken Ridge Cricket Club and Richard Goodwin (2021/2022 season – 8 matches, 115 runs, 3 wickets) playing for Cromer Cricket Club, having experience in playing grade-level cricket in Victoria and New South Wales regions.
The following 14 players have been selected for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Global Qualifiers: Jonathan Hill (Captain), Daniel Smith, Gurbhupinder Chohan, Vimal Kumar, Hernie Isorena, Grant Russ, Siva Mohan Busireddy, Machanda Bidappa, Jean-Miguel Podosky, Richie Goodwin, Huzaifa Mohammed, Ajeet Kumar, Henry Tyler (Head-Coach and Player) and Muzammil Shahzad.
