Hooper, Benjamin In Windies Squad To Australia (22 Jul 1996)

19 July 1996

Hooper, Benjamin in Windies squad to Australia

By A Correspondent

The West Indies selectors included promising pace bowler Nix- on McLean and left-handed opener Adrian Griffith in the cricket team to tour Australia for a five Test series, and a triangular one- day series featuring Pakistan besides the Windies and the host nation, from November 1996 to February 1997.

The touring party under skipper Courtney Walsh was announced by West Indies Cricket Board secretary Andrew Sealy at Bridgetown on Friday.

McLean, who is ten days shy of his 23rd birthday, is a tall, lively pace bowler from St Vincent who plays for the Windward Islands side in the local Red Stripe Cup. He makes up one of a battery of six pace bowlers, including Patterson Thompson, the burly 24-year-old who showed up as very fast when he debuted at home against New Zealand in April this year. Thompson makes his first overseas tour, while his Barbados teammate Ottis Gibson, a pacy all-rounder, misses out thanks to a groin strain suffered during the World Cup and a more recent hernia operation.

Antiguan pace bowler Kenneth Benjamin, who has failed to make the side after a successful debut tour of England in the summer of 1995 thanks to disciplinary problems, makes a return to the side.

Adrian Griffith, 24, of Barbados, wins a Test place thanks to a high scoring season in the 1996 Red Stripe games. The stylish left-handed opening batsman has already rattled up three centuries in five outings in domestic cricket, and will join fellow openers Sherwin Campbell and Robert Samuels, both of whom hit their maiden Test hundreds against New Zealand earlier this year.

Griffith`s inclusion, paradoxically, has been at the expense of 33 year old Phil Simmons, who after a successful stint in the one-day internationals against the touring Kiwis, won a Test place but failed to make an impression at the longer version of the game.

Courtney Browne will keep wickets, and Junior Murray will be his understudy on tour.

As for the batting lineup, Brian Lara will lead the star parade along with the upcoming Shivnaraine Chanderpaul and the prolific Jimmy Adams, while the stylish Carl Hooper, who missed the World Cup and the New Zealand tour owing to illness, has been recalled to the side.

The full side is as follows: Courtney Walsh (captain), Jimmy Adams, Curtley Ambrose, Kenny Benjamin, Ian Bishop, Courtney Browne, Sherwin Campbell, Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, Adrian Griffith, Roland Holder, Carl Hooper, Brian Lara, Nixon McLean, Junior Murray, Robert Samuels, and Patterson Thompson.

Source :: Rediff On The NeT (https://www.rediff.co.in)