Green Team - New faces for England tour

Even with Brian Lara's late inclusion, the West Indies team for this summer's England tour remains filled with young and inexperienced players.

Not since 1969, when the selectors made sweeping changes following a disappointing tour of Australia and New Zealand, have the West Indies gone to England with so many newcomers. Nine of the 16 then were yet to play Test cricket.

Chairman of selectors Michael Findlay said yesterday it was 'in keeping with our policy to rebuild the team in order to sustain the long-term future of West Indies cricket'.

Five of the eight specialist batsmen chosen 'left-handers Adrian Griffith, Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds and the uncapped teenaged right-hander Ramnaresh Sarwan' have played fewer than ten Tests, Sarwan none at all.

None has played a Test in England. Nor have wicket-keeper Ridley Jacobs, fast bowlers Reon King, Franklyn Rose, Nixon McLean and Corey Collymore and leg-spinner Mahendra Nagamootoo, along with fellow Guyanese Sarwan the second uncapped player in the team.

Rose and McLean have both at least had county cricket experience, Rose, with Northamptonshire, and McLean, with Hampshire.

The 19-year-old Sarwan's selection was predicated by his inclusion in the squad of 14 for the first Test against Pakistan at Bourda and prompted by his stylish hundreds in each innings of the President's XI match against the touring Zimbabweans in February.

He replaced Ricardo Powell, the power-hitting, 21-year-old Jamaican who is one of five players who lost their places from the previous tour of New Zealand in December and January. The others are fast bowlers Merv Dillon, Pedro Collins, leg-spinner Dinanath Ramnarine and off-spinner Nehemiah Perry.

Nagamootoo, nephew of former West Indies captain Alvin Kallicharran, becomes the third leg-spinner picked in the past three years, displacing Ramnarine and Rawl Lewis on the strength of his consistency at regional level that brought him 31 wickets in the seven 2000 Busta Cup matches.

As expected, the two veteran fast bowlers, Courtney Walsh, 37, Test cricket's new wicket king with 437 in 114 Tests, and Curtly Ambrose, 36, with 381 wickets in his 91 Tests, spearhead the six fast bowlers.

It is Walsh's fifth tour of England, Ambrose's fourth.

The surprise choice is the sixth fast bowler Corey Collymore. The aggressive, 22-year-old Collymore has only recently recovered from a back injury that kept him out of action since the DMC Trophy tournament against India and Pakistan last September.

He has his first major match on return for the West Indies 'A' team against Pakistan, starting at Kensington Oval here today, and Dillon was put on standby if he does not prove fit enough.

Findlay confirmed that the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) had turned down his request to increase the team from 16 to 17. It means that Ridley Jacobs is the only specialist wicket-keeper, a calculated gamble. Captain Adams or batsman Hinds would relieve him for minor matches.

Findlay revealed that the WICB had agreed that changes could be made to the team for the triangular series of One-Day Internationals against England and Zimbabwe but that anyone omitted would stay in England for the remaining three Tests.

The West Indies play five Tests against England, the first starting in Birmingham June 15, and take on England and Zimbabwe in a triangular series of One-Day Internationals July 6 to July 22.