Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo will remain on the sidelines for the first two One-day Internationals against Zimbabwe, the West Indies Cricket Board announced late Monday.

Media reports indicated that Sarwan and Bravo were excluded from a 14-member West Indies squad because the team management wants the two players to prove their fitness before clearing them for action.

This follows a slew of injuries over the last three months that has gnawed away at the fabric of the side, and has been advanced as a contributing factor to their drab performance in Australia, where they were swept in four of five ODIs and two Twenty20 Internationals.

Sarwan has been out of commission for the last three months with a back injury that he sustained on the Test tour of Australia last December.

But he made a hundred for his native Guyana against Windward Islands in a domestic first-class match over the weekend that appeared to show he had regained some degree of form and fitness.

Bravo has been sidelined with a thumb injury he picked up during the Twenty20 Big Bash in Australia which forced him to miss the recent ODIs andT2OIs there.

The livewire all-rounder practised with the

side on the eve of Sunday's T20 match against the Zimbabweans in his native THnidad, but he admitted in a television interview he would prefer a few club matches before returning to the hotbed of international competition.

The home team still has fast bowlers Jerome Taylor and Fidel Edwards under treatment. Both have been battlingback injuries.

Taylor may return in the middle of the year for the home series against South Africa, but Edwards is likely to miss the rest of the year following surgery last month.

West Indies will benefit from the return of their captain and talismanic opener Chris Gayle, after he was allowed to miss the T20I against the visitors on compassionate grounds to visit his ill mother.

He will have to help West Indies restore their confidence and plummeting reputation, after they sunk to a shocking 26-run defeat to the African side.

Narsingh Deonarine has been drafted into the squad to replace fellow left-hander Darren Bravo, Dwayne's younger brother, in the only change to the squad that played in the T20I.

The first ODI is on Thursday at the Guyana National Stadium, where the second match is also scheduled for Saturday.

SQUAD

Chris Gayle (captain), Adrian Barath, Sulieman Benn, David Bernard, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Narsingh Deonarine, Andre Fletcher, Nikita Miller, Kieron Pollard, Denesh Ramdin, Ravi Rampaul, Kemar Roach, Darren Sammy, Dwayne Smith.