T&T fast bowler Akeel See­tal is fo­cused on be­ing se­lect­ed on the West In­dies Un­der-19 team to com­pete at the ICC Youth World Cup in Bangladesh next year.See­tal is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in the West In­dies Un­der-19 train­ing camp at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona Cam­pus in Ja­maica. The oth­er play­ers from T&T se­lect­ed for the 19-man camp are Jyd Goolie, Kirstan Kallicha­ran and Kea­gan Sim­mons.

The camp com­menced on Mon­day with the play­ers col­lect­ing their of­fi­cial train­ing kits and at­tend­ing a men­tal prepa­ra­tion ses­sion. Phys­i­cal train­ing and out­door drills start­ed to­day as the tech­ni­cal staff con­tin­ued to eval­u­ate the play­ers.The na­tion­al Un­der-19 fast bowler di­vulged that he has achieved his first goal of mak­ing the train­ing camp and is now fo­cused on be­ing se­lect­ed in the fi­nal squad.

"I have been work­ing hard for a re­al­ly long time and I set my mind to mak­ing the train­ing squad. This was a ma­jor goal from the start of the Re­gion­al Un­der-19 tour­na­ment. Know­ing that I am in the West In­dies train­ing squad and I have a chance of mak­ing the fi­nal squad makes every­thing com­plete," said See­tal.

The Cane Farm Unit­ed play­er ex­plained that play­ing at an ICC Un­der-19 World Cup has been one of his ma­jor goals since pro­gress­ing through the youth ranks in T&T.

"Well hon­est­ly it is my dream as a youth crick­eter to play at Un­der-19 World Cup. I just want to be there, I want to play and per­form, I want to make every­one hap­py and proud, es­pe­cial­ly those peo­ple who have been work­ing hard with me. I want to show peo­ple the hard work they in­vest­ed in me did not go to waste," said See­tal.

He re­vealed that his strong per­for­mances at the Re­gion­al Un­der-19 tour­na­ment has en­abled him to en­ter the camp with a great deal of con­fi­dence and is look­ing for­ward to prov­ing his cre­den­tials to the coach­ing staff and se­lec­tors.

"Right now my con­fi­dence is at a high and I be­lieve that if I do my best at this train­ing camp I can make the West In­dies Un­der-19 team. This is the ap­proach I used through­out the Un­der-19 tour­na­ment and it has been work­ing for me. I had a good tour­na­ment and I want to take that form in­to the train­ing ses­sions and I am treat­ing each ses­sion like it is the fi­nals for a game so I can make the fi­nal squad," See­tal said.

He added that the T&T play­ers in the train­ing camp were keep­ing each oth­er mo­ti­vat­ed and en­sur­ing they are fo­cused at all times.

"The com­fort lev­el is at a high be­cause nor­mal­ly it's just me and Amir Jan­goo but he is not here. It's a plus to have three oth­ers with me and we have been lim­ing to­geth­er. All of us are room­ing kind of close so we are just chill­ing and talk­ing to each oth­er to en­sure we stay fo­cused and hap­py even though we are miss­ing home."