Images of the future

The spotlight has been trained on the future of West Indies cricket over the past couple of months. It has revealed varying images.

The West Indies Under-19s and Barbados Under-13s have done us proud on their different journeys through England.

The public interest and fierce competitiveness in Under-15 schools cricket in Barbados was again in evidence last week in the BET final between Lodge and Queen's College.

And in Guyana, the annual regional Under-19 tournament has ended with new champions, the Leewards in the long game, Barbados in the One Day.

These are the sources that will supply the West Indies with their Test cricketers of the future. Every one of the 17 players on the most recent West Indies trip to Zimbabwe and Kenya emerged from such tours and tournaments so we can reasonably expect the current crop of teenagers to eventually provide as many.

Not all will come through, of course. For one reason or another, there are those, possibly even some of the best at this stage of their lives, who will lose form or interest, or both, and find themselves some other occupation.

Recent evidence is that these will be fewer and fewer. The young West Indies cricketer in the 21st century is being spotted, coached and prepared for a career in the game far earlier than they ever were.

The Barbadian Under-13s who went to England last month, for instance, have already had every support and encouragement to get them to the top.

Providing they have the talent, the dedication and the love for the game, they will proceed into the regional Under-15 and Under-19 tournaments, play age-group internationals and have their game polished at the Shell Academy in Grenada before moving into their territorial teams.

It would be disappointing if some of the outstanding individuals among the West Indies Under-19s, who won both One Day and Test series in England recently, don't follow the road taken by so many into the senior West Indies team.

Devon Smith, the little left-handed Grenadian opener, attracted the most attention for his aggressive style and his heavy scoring that brought him averages of 121.5 in the three One-Dayers and 62.33 in the Tests.

Tonito Willett, son of the former West Indies left-arm spinner Elquemedo Willett, and the left-handed Narsingh Deonarine, both still only 18, also scored consistently and, in the first Test I watched in Leicester, impressively. Willett had already showed his potential in the West Indies B team in the Busta Cup, Deonarine in the 1999 tournament in Barbados when he was only 16.

The left-arm medium-pacer Kenroy Peters was the outstanding bowler, demonstrating what controlled swing bowling can achieve. He will find it more difficult contending with better, more experienced batsmen but at Leicester he hardly bowled a bad ball in 53 overs from which he had match figures of 11 for 88.

His figures in both forms of the game were staggering (seven wickets and an economy rate of 2.15 in the One-Dayers, 16 wickets at 12.68 each and less than two runs an over in the Tests).

What impressed me over the four days was the team's enthusiasm and enjoyment, engendered by manager Jeff Broomes and coach Gus Logie. These are vital elements to success and, from all reports, served the Barbados Under-13s well.

If the results in England raised optimism over where West Indies cricket is heading, they were counterbalanced by some worrying signs out of the Guyana tournament.

One was that only two hundreds were scored in the 15 three-day matches. Another was the assessment of Clyde Butts, one of the selectors, that the fielding was sub-standard.

Desmond Browne, the Barbados team manager, spoke of a basic lack of concentration and poor shot selection. These are two of the foundations of batting and hundreds are going to be scarce until they are understood and mastered.

It is pertinent that, while our young batsmen have struggled to put together reasonable scores in a tournament against their peers, two 17-year-olds have recently marked their Test debuts with hundreds. The Zimbabwean Hamilton Masakadza got his against the West Indies in July and yesterday the Bangladeshi Mohammed Ashraful scored his against the wiles of Muralitheran and Sri Lanka.

Is there a current West Indian teenager capable of such a feat, even at first-class level?

There were other negative news out of Guyana complaints of incompetent umpiring, a charge by Trinidad and Tobago coach Tony Gray of deliberate and official home bias against his team and open criticism of the selection of a squad for next year's youth World Cup by Barbados coach Roddy Estwick.

These are not issues new to West Indies cricket and umpiring, at all levels and in all territories, is clearly in need of serious attention.

Yet the most damning report was of sledging, the verbal abuse of the opposition during play. There were whispers of it when the tournament was held in Barbados in 1999, but now the president of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB), Chetram Singh, spoke publicly about it.

It is a tactic the Australians have used to good effect. It has been taken up by others but is one charge that could never been laid against the West Indies.

Why the youngsters now feel they have to engage in it is not clear, but the administrators have to quickly make it known that it has no place in West Indies cricket.