Devon Thomas

Not getting to bat on both ODI and T20I debut as part of a makeshift West Indies squad in 2009, getting diagnosed with chicken pox in 2011, suffering from a road accident in 2014, and getting banned by the ICC in 2024 for breaching the anti-corruption code: it wasn't easy to be Devon Thomas.

Thomas' ride at the international level began when he was just 19, and was selected to make up for the regular players' absence in the senior team due to a contract dispute with the board. That second-string squad of West Indies in 2009 lost both the Test and the ODI series at home to Bangladesh, and Thomas' start in international cricket wasn't very notable either. He scored 29* in the third ODI, which was the only time he batted out of the three games he played during that series.

But before the rocky days arrived, wicketkeeper-batter Thomas was part of the West Indies Under-19 side that won the Plate Final of the 2008 World Cup. He even hit 53 from No. 8 in their first group match, against South Africa.

The risk of omission from the senior national side looming with the due return of the regulars, Thomas was banished from international cricket after his debut series, but returned to the West Indies squad for the 2011 World Cup. He opened the batting in six of West Indies' seven matches, including the quarter-final, but got into double figures only twice. Thomas' stop-start career continued when chicken pox forced him to miss the home ODIs against Pakistan just after the World Cup.

However, he was back in the ODI side in mid-2012, this time getting a run of 12 games over the next seven months. But it just wasn't meant to be. Thomas never played an ODI after February 2013, finishing with a below-par average of 14, and a highest score of just 37 in 19 innings.

He returned to play T20Is for West Indies in December 2012, only to not get to bat again. In his next T20I, two months later, Thomas again only watched his colleagues bat from the dugout. He had to continue to wait, as his next T20I came eight years further down in December 2021. Thomas finished with 12 T20Is, before finally getting a Test debut in Adelaide in December 2022.

But the five-year ban from the ICC for "contriving to fix" matches, applicable from May 2023, when he was aged 33, leaves Thomas with a cloud hanging over his international future.