Tamar Lambert

The new Courtnay Daley-led national selection panel on Tuesday named national four-day captain Tamar Lambert among a list of 25 players who have been invited to train with the national Twenty20 squad ahead of next January's Caribbean Twenty20 Championship.

The championship will be jointly staged by Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.

Last season, Lambert failed to make the 14-man squad after a poor showing in the preceding championship.

He was singled out as one of several Jamaicans batsmen who struggled to get the ball off the square.

However, after a fairly successful regional Super50 championship in October, in which he played integral roles with the bat to help Jamaica win, the country's new selection panel, which includes Delroy Morgan and Robert Samuels, has decided to give the 30-year-old another opportunity.

Last season's selection panel, which worked in tandem with former technical director, Jimmy Adams, included former national coach, Gus Logie.

Meanwhile, Super50 captain Chris Gayle, who is in Zimbabwe competing in their domestic Twenty20 championship, is not included in the 25-man squad.

Other notable players who are missing are Marlon Samuels, Carlton Baugh Jr, André Russell, and Danza Hyatt, who are all away on West Indies duties.

The national selection panel also made the decision to give first-time call-ups to former national Under-19 and Kingston batsman Garth Garvey, his clubmate and spinner Fabian Forbes and Manchester batsman Oshane Walters.

The squad will commence training this week under the guidance of coach Junior Bennett and will play practice matches at Kensington today and tomorrow.

Match time each day is 1 p.m.

Jamaica, in five previous attempts, have never won a regional Twenty20 championship.

The winners of the Caribbean Twenty20 Championship also gets the opportunity to represent the region in the lucrative Airtel Champions Twenty20 League in India.

SQUAD: Jermaine Blackwood, Kenar Lewis, Chadwick Walton, Tamar Lambert, Xavier Marshall, Shawn Findlay, John Campbell, Sheldon Cotterell, Horace Miller, Jamie Merchant, Krishmar Santokie, Nikita Miller, Nkrumah Bonner, David Bernard Jr, Andrew Richardson, Odean Brown, Yanick Elliott, Oshane Walters, Damion Jacobs, Fabian Forbes, Garth Garvey, Simon Jackson, Brenton Parchment, Howard Powell, André McCarthy.