When the ICC under-19 youth World Cup began to streamline in the Caribbean, a lot of hopes rested on the West Indies youth side but a first-round exit left a lot to ponder for the Caribbean fans.
From the onset, the hosts were rocked by successive losses in their two warm-up games where they failed to score over 200 runs in both matches.
As was the case, the batting of the Floyd Reifer-coached contingent continued to struggle throughout the tournamemt.
The hosts won just three matches in their stint, beating minnows, Scotland by seven wickets, Papua New Guinea by 169 runs and Zimbabwe by eight wickets. Consequently, losses came at the hands of powerhouses, Australia, Sri Lanka and shockingly newbies, United Arab Emirates, resulting in them finishing at 11th position, their worst performance at the event.
The Maroon boys batting, while
under the microscope was somewhat salvaged by the efforts of Kevin Wickham, who came into the side as a COVID-19 substitute, but not before all hopes of progressing were extinguished.
Wickham ended as the highest run getter, finishing with 243 runs from four innings, including a century and two half centuries. His average of 81 is also the third highest among all players, trailing Australia’s Teague Wyllie (132) and India captain, Yash Dhull (102).
Teddy Bishop came to the fore with a century in the last match to give the hosts a consolation win but ended with just 206 runs in six innings.
Matthew Nandu also chalked up a century, hitting 128 against Papua New Guinea however, he failed to reach double figures in the five other official matches only to end with 151 runs.
West Indies captain, Ackeem Auguste played just one innings in the tournament where he made 57 while Nathan Edward notched up a half century in one of his two innings.
Shaqkere Parris showed promise at the top of the order with consistent starts, however, he failed to convert those starts into big scores before getting out for 4, 26, 16, 64 and seven.
The inconsistency continued even with Jordan Johnson who made 47 against Sri Lanka and 14 not out against Scotland but followed those up with a duck and eight.
Even stand-in captain for a few matches, Giovonte Depeiza, who entered the competition as a big hitting Barbadian, failed to score a single run in his two stints at the crease.
With the ball, young pacer, Shiva Sankar stood out from the rest, taking nine wickets while displaying his skillset. Nandu and Rivaldo Clarke also enjoyed a fair amount of success with six wickets each but the frontline bowlers were ineffective for the most part of the competition. Isai Thorne, Edward and Anderson Mahase all took four wickets.
Fingers could be pointed to a lot of reasons that attributed to this horrendous performance, one of which begs the question of selection. With no Regional Under-19 tournament, as per tradition in place, a different selection process was used. It is still to be seen if this process was impartial with a lot of promising talents left out of the squad.
One such player is the versatile Guyanese, Mavindra Dindyal. The 17-year-old is a potent top order batsman who could have proven effective, having shown his talents in the under-15 and under-17 regional tournaments prior to the COVID-19 pandemic where he secured most valuable player awards. He has also shown his batting skills in the United Kingdom where he toured with West Indies Under-16 and finished as the leading run scorer on both occasions.
What really went wrong? Was it lack of preparation? Were the right players selected? Where does the young bunch go from here?
Those are questions that Cricket West Indies needs to answer going forward.
