ROSEAU-Un­capped Guyana bats­man As­sad Fu­dadin is look­ing for­ward to his first in­ter­na­tion­al out­ing as West In­dies stepped up prepa­ra­tions for the third and fi­nal Dig­i­cel Test against Aus­tralia here, start­ing to­day. Dat­ing back to his up­bring­ing from the play­ing field at the Rose Hall Crick­et Club to the West In­dies team, Fu­dadin is anx­ious for his big mo­ment. He had his first day among his new team-mates in the West In­dies camp on Sat­ur­day, as the West In­dies seek to lev­el the se­ries at Wind­sor Park fol­low­ing a three-wick­et de­feat in the open­ing match in Bar­ba­dos, which was fol­lowed by a draw in the rain-ru­ined bat­tle in Trinidad. As a boy grow­ing up in the Rose Hall area in the coun­ty of Berbice, Fu­dadin said he "en­joyed play­ing some crick­et" but his first love was track and field. He ex­celled in sprints and the jumps and had vi­sions of rep­re­sent­ing his coun­try on the world stage. He made the switch to crick­et in his ear­ly teens and it is the gen­tle­man's game, which has brought him in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

"Around age 13, I start­ed to pay more at­ten­tion to crick­et and re­alised that I had the skills to play well at a com­pet­i­tive lev­el," left-han­der Fu­dadin said. "Some peo­ple told me I had 'it' in me and could go places if I put in the work. I fol­lowed the good ad­vice. Two years lat­er, I was in the Guyana Un­der-15 team and that year I was in the West In­dies team which played in the (Un­der-15) World Cup in Eng­land." That team al­so in­clud­ed fast bowler Ravi Ram­paul and wick­et-keep­er/bats­man De­nesh Ramdin and the West In­dies won the tour­na­ment with a su­perb vic­to­ry in the fi­nal at Lord's. "At that stage track start­ed to take a back seat and I start­ed to work hard and con­cen­trate on my crick­et. I got some suc­cess and de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue. I start­ed to ded­i­cate a lot of time to de­vel­op­ing my game and I quick­ly re­alised that in or­der to be a suc­cess in the game of crick­et I had to be dis­ci­plined and al­ways will­ing to learn," the 26-year-old soft-spo­ken Guyanese added. "I pro­gressed through the ranks play­ing at the Un­der-19 lev­el for the West In­dies but I did not have the suc­cess that I was look­ing for. I kept work­ing hard and I'm hap­py that the se­lec­tors have put their faith in me." Fu­dadin is on­ly the sec­ond play­er from the Rose Hall Club to be se­lect­ed for the West In­dies. The first was all-rounder Roys­ton Cran­don, who played a sin­gle One-Day In­ter­na­tion­al back in 2009.

"I would say I was for­tu­nate ... the club was op­po­site my house and my school was close by, so I didn't have far to go. My fam­i­ly put ed­u­ca­tion first so I had to make sure I did my school work be­fore I could play crick­et," he said. "I re­ceived sup­port from every­one in my fam­i­ly. My par­ents, my broth­er Ab­del, who al­so played Un­der-15 for Guyana, and my wife Akeema have all been very sup­port­ive. I owe a lot to them. They kept me go­ing dur­ing the tough pe­ri­ods and now I just want to make the most of this op­por­tu­ni­ty at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el." Af­ter a few mod­er­ate sea­sons at the first-class lev­el Fu­dadin made a break­through this year. He was the sec­ond high­est run-scor­er in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Re­gion­al four-day cham­pi­onship, amass­ing 576 runs in­clud­ing two cen­turies at an av­er­age of 48. Fu­dadin de­scribed him­self as a con­fi­dent play­er who al­ways looks to build an in­nings. "I am feel­ing re­laxed and con­fi­dent at the mo­ment. Every­one has wel­comed me in­to the team. I knew some of the oth­ers from be­fore-I played with Shiv (Chan­der­paul) and Nars­ingh (De­onar­ine) in the Guyana team. I al­so played with oth­ers in the youth teams (West In­dies Un­der-15 and West In­dies Un­der-19) and the West In­dies A Team. It's just a mat­ter of fit­ting in and do­ing what is re­quired," Fu­dadin said af­ter Sat­ur­day's train­ing ses­sion. (CMC)