ST JOHN’S – Teenagers Jor­dan John­son and Isai Thorne have been called up to the West In­dies Acad­e­my squad for the red and white-ball se­ries against Ire­land Acad­e­my bowl­ing off in An­tigua on Fri­day.

John­son and Thorne are two of four new play­ers in the squad, 22-year-old off-spin­ner Ju­nior Sin­clair and bat­ting all-rounder Kadeem Al­leyne, al­so 22, who av­er­aged 45 for Com­bined Cam­pus­es and Col­leges in the Su­per50 Cup, the oth­er two.

Al­leyne will fea­ture on­ly in the white-ball se­ries while Thorne will turn out in the red-ball phase on­ly.

Im­pres­sive all-rounder Ny­eem Young has been named to lead the squad which will play three List A match­es and two four-day first class match­es from No­vem­ber 17 to De­cem­ber 5 at Coolidge Crick­et Ground and the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Sta­di­um.

The 23-year-old is fresh from lead­ing the Acad­e­my in the Re­gion­al Su­per50 Cup where he av­er­aged 57 with the bat and was the lead­ing wick­et-tak­er for his side with 12 scalps at 17 apiece.

“The Ire­land Se­ries has great sig­nif­i­cance to the CWI High Per­for­mance Path­way as it will be the first bi­lat­er­al Se­ries since the Acad­e­my pro­gramme was in­tro­duced in Ju­ly 2022,” said Crick­et West In­dies high per­for­mance man­ag­er, Graeme West.

“Play­ing both 50-over and red ball four-day se­ries will pro­vide the Acad­e­my squad with fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties to progress their skills fol­low­ing promis­ing show­ings in the Headley-Weekes Se­ries and more re­cent­ly in the CG Unit­ed Su­per50 Cup.”

He con­tin­ued: “The Acad­e­my squad re­al­ly em­braced the chal­lenge that the Su­per50 Cup pro­vid­ed, and it was en­cour­ag­ing to see the con­ver­sion of win­ning po­si­tions as this was a fo­cus area com­ing out of 2022.

“We will look to see the learn­ing over the past three weeks come through dur­ing the 50 over se­ries against Ire­land.”

The three 50-over match­es will form the first part of the se­ries from No­vem­ber 17-21, with the four-day match­es sched­uled for Coolidge be­gin­ning No­vem­ber 25.

And West said the match­es would pro­vide a de­vel­op­men­tal path­way for the play­ers, es­pe­cial­ly John­son who scored heav­i­ly on the Un­der-19 tour of Sri Lan­ka ear­li­er in the year.

“The two four-day games will al­low the play­ers to gain more ex­pe­ri­ence and re­in­force the game plan that worked so suc­cess­ful­ly dur­ing the Headley-Weekes Tri-Se­ries,” he ex­plained.

“With Kirk McKen­zie and Kevlon An­der­son grad­u­at­ing to their re­spec­tive fran­chis­es, the se­ries will pro­vide Jor­dan John­son with the plat­form to build on his ex­cep­tion­al per­for­mances for the West In­dies Ris­ing Stars Un­der-19 side in Sri Lan­ka.”

SQUAD – Ny­eem Young (cap­tain), Ac­k­eem Au­guste, Joshua Bish­op, Ted­dy Bish­op, Car­lon Bowen-Tuck­ett, McKen­ny Clarke, Jor­dan John­son, Leonar­do Julien, Jo­hann Layne, Matthew Nan­du, Ash­mead Nedd, Kelvin Pit­man, Ju­nior Sin­clair, Kevin Wick­ham, Kadeem Al­leyne (white ball match­es on­ly), Isai Thorne (red ball match­es on­ly)

CMC