Tal­ent­ed young bats­man Bri­an Christ­mas from east Trinidad rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies un­der-19 team in the Mid­dle East re­cent­ly but wasn't se­lect­ed in the re­gion­al youth team cur­rent­ly on tour of the US. The oth­er three play­ers from T&T, Kieron Joseph, Stephen Kat­wa­roo and Deron Davis, who rep­re­sent­ed the West In­dies on that tour are in the US with the present team. Why? For once the WICB se­lec­tors have not blun­dered. The blame lies with the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB). In its quest to win the West In­dies un­der-15 tour­na­ment, the board de­cid­ed to have Christ­mas play at this low­er di­vi­sion in­stead of com­pet­ing at the high­er lev­el.

Is win­ning a re­gion­al tour­na­ment more im­por­tant than the de­vel­op­ment of the play­er? Wouldn't it have been more ben­e­fi­cial to have this young­ster com­pete with the big­ger boys where com­pe­ti­tion would be tougher and as a re­sult would as­sist in his de­vel­op­ment? Some­body in au­thor­i­ty should make the TTCB an­swer for this blun­der. Al­so, I ask why is it that none of the re­gion­al un­der-15 match­es is card­ed for the best venues in T&T, such as the QP Oval, UWI and UTT? Wouldn't play­ing at the best venues as­sist the de­vel­op­ment of our re­gion's young crick­eters? I have ob­served that over the last two years all youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes have been scrapped by the TTCB so I have to ask where is lo­cal crick­et re­al­ly head­ing?

Richard Ramkissoon

Ch­agua­nas