DILON Heyliger is the lone Guyanese-born player named in Canada’s 14-man squad that departed the North American country on Wednesday to participate in the ICC 2022 Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers, to be staged in Oman from February 18.

The tall right-arm 32-year-old fast bowler, who hails from Essequibo and represented Guyana at the youth level, also played for Montreal Tigers in the second edition of the Global T20 Canada in 2019 and had the unique feat of grabbing a hat-trick against Edmonton Royals. He ended with the remarkable figures of 4-1-13-3 and also had the satisfaction of hitting the winning runs for his team.

In 2019, Heyliger emerged as the top wicket-taker at the ICC Americas T20 Qualifiers, played in Bermuda. He finished the tournament with 11 wickets, including capturing four for 18 versus Bermuda, a feat for which he was richly rewarded, emerging as the best bowler as Canada played unbeaten.

The qualifiers get underway on February 18 in Oman with the hosts taking on Nepal in the opening game. The event is one of two global qualifiers that together form the final stages of the qualification process for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022.

The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier A features hosts Oman, Bahrain, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Nepal, Philippines, and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Ireland and Oman had qualified for this tournament after being eliminated in the first round of the Men’s T20 World Cup 2021, whilst Nepal and the UAE booked their slots via their rankings in the ICC MRF Tyres Men’s T20I Team rankings. The other participating teams qualified through regional qualifying tournaments held through the course of last year.

The teams in Qualifier A are divided into two groups of four. Each team will play all the other teams once in their group, followed by position classification matches. The two teams that reach the final will advance to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia later this year.
The Canadians are scheduled to play two warm-up matches against Germany before beginning their World Cup Qualification campaign against the Philippines on Friday, February 18.

The Canadian squad reads: Navneet Dhaliwal (captain), Dilon Heyliger, Rishiv Joshi, Jatinder Matharu, Shreyas Moova, Salman Nazar, Rayyan Pathan, Kaleem Sana, Junaid Siddiqui, Ravinderpal Singh, Matthew Spoors, Hamza Tarik, Harsh Thaker, Saad Zafar.

Reserves: Sahid Ahmedzai, Akash Gill, Romel Sahzad, Bhupinder Sohal, Kanwarpal Tathgur, Uday Walia, Simran Virk.

The squad will be accompanied by five officials: Carlos Ragoonath – manager, Amrinder Bhinder – coach, Daulat Khan – fielding coach, Khurram Chohan – bowling coach and Ankur Sharma – physio.

(Frederick Halley)