Sri Lanka true test of team

The selectors have predictably stuck to the players who served the West Indies well in Zimbabwe and Kenya recently for the forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka that will provide a more genuine guide as to their true status.

All but one of the 16 players named yesterday were on the African trip that produced success in both Test and One-Day series.

The odd man out is Brian Lara, whose cricket since the end of the home series against South Africa in May has been restricted to three Red Stripe Bowl matches over the past two weeks.

The Sri Lankan venture, of three Tests and a triangular One- Day series, presents a test as much of his appetite for the game he has graced with his sublime batting, as of the strength of a team that has shown glimpses of emerging from a long and depressing slump.

Twice in the past two years Lara has withdrawn from action, if for different reasons.

He took four months off early last year after resigning the captaincy to rebuild all facets of my game so as to sustain the remainder of my cricketing career.

In June, he pulled out of the Zimbabwe tour even before it has started because of a persistent right hamstring injury that has bothered him for more than a year and even prevented him participating in Trinidad and Tobago's trials for the Bowl a few weeks ago.

His motivation has been questioned by many, most prominent among them the president of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board, Alloy Lequay. There are others, like Sir Everton Weekes, fearful that the game has seen the best of him.

Sri Lanka, well-balanced, confident after a recent home series triumph over India, strong in batting and with Muttiah Muralitheran, one of the finest off-spinners of all time in their ranks, represent appreciably more challenging opposition than the limited Zimbabweans. The West Indies will have to be at their very best to compete and prevent a repetition of the humiliations they have endured overseas prior to their recent African trip. The task would be considerably eased if Lara provides the leadership with his batting that has so often been essential to the cause, most prominently against the Australians in the Caribbean in 1999.

Lara has taken the place of another left-hander, Wavell Hinds, whose exit from the team represents a decline that has become commonplace among promising young West Indian players. Only a year-and-a-half ago, in Lara's first absence, Hinds was scoring 165 at No.3 in his fifth Test innings against a Pakistani attack of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Abdur Razzaq, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed and driving away with the Man Of The Series car.

Now, a host of unfortunate umpiring decisions later and with growing self-doubt, he must wonder about his future. He should not despair. He is only 25 and an opening but not as opener will eventually appear.

Corey Collymore is another whose early promise has faded so that he, too, is again on the outside, of both West Indies and Barbados teams, only three months after earning the Man- Of-The-Match award in the final victory over India in the Zimbabwe One-Day final.

His misfortune has been a serious back injury that has caused him to remodel his action and transformed a fast, aggressive, outswing bowler of exciting possibilities into a chest-on journeyman.

One can only imagine his utter frustration at not being able to gain selection among five fast bowlers, even in the absence of Cameron Cuffy, whose foot injury developed in Zimbabwe is more long-term than first thought. Once more, Ridley Jacobs has been chosen as the only wicket-keeper. Chief selector Mike Findlay explained yesterday that, since the squad was limited to 16, to have chosen another would have been at the expense of a batsman or a bowler and they were not prepared to make that sacrifice.

It is an enormous risk. It prompts the chilling image of Leon Garrick or Ramnaresh Sarwan filling in with not an iota of previous experience of keeping should Jacobs crack a finger or come down with anthrax the day before a Test.

As it was, it would have happened in the final against India in Zimbabwe but for pleading by the management that delayed a suspension on Jacobs. And Colombo is even further away from the Caribbean than Harare.

As it is, Jacobs is carrying an injury to a finger that kept him out of the last two Red Stripe Bowl matches and Courtney Browne has been summoned to the preparatory camp in Jamaica that starts Tuesday and goes through to October 23 as a precautionary measure, the West Indies Cricket Board said yesterday.

The doctor has advised that Jacobs participate in batting drills only during the camp, following which he will be assessed to determine his fitness for the tour, the WICB release stated.

The team leaves for Sri Lanka on October 30.