In my last col­umn, I al­lowed my­self a mo­ment of op­ti­mism re­gard­ing the West In­dies Un­der-19 team com­pet­ing in the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) Un­der-19 World Cup.

Hav­ing seen the West In­dies U-19s dis­patch Eng­land and Sri Lan­ka be­fore the World Cup, I al­lowed my­self that lux­u­ry of op­ti­mism. How­ev­er, af­ter watch­ing the open­ing en­coun­ters against Tan­za­nia and Afghanistan, that op­ti­mism has been re­placed by a fa­mil­iar sense of "back to the draw­ing board" as the per­for­mances have been dis­ap­point­ing.

The bat­ting hasn’t re­al­ly clicked, and even though they man­aged to scrape a five-wick­et win against Tan­za­nia, it wasn't so much an easy vic­to­ry as it was a nar­row es­cape from an in­ter­na­tion­al in­ci­dent. That vic­to­ry should have giv­en them the con­fi­dence go­ing in­to the sec­ond game against the Afghans with the added boost they need­ed to go on to vic­to­ry. We ex­pect­ed that win to pro­vide a spring­board; in­stead, it felt more like a trap­door. Their Asian op­po­nents put up a mas­ter class per­for­mance that had the young West In­dies play­ers bam­boo­zled and look­ing for an­swers. Their bat­ting was out­stand­ing, their bowl­ing was pre­cise to the point of feel­ing per­son­al, and their field­ing was su­perb. It was a clas­sic all-around per­for­mance by a well-drilled unit that seemed to have the right men­tal at­ti­tude go­ing in­to the game.

I did not see the Afghans' first en­counter against the South Africans. Still, when I looked at the score­card and saw that they scored 266 for 8 in their 50 overs and then dis­missed the Pro­teas for 238, I knew the West In­di­ans would have to per­form at their high­est lev­el to de­feat the Afghans.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it was not to be, and while they re­strict­ed them to 262 for 6, the Caribbean side could on­ly get to 124. A dis­ap­point­ing bat­ting per­for­mance with the lone ranger, Jew­el An­drew, con­tribut­ing 57. As ex­pect­ed, he is the back­bone of the bat­ting, get­ting a re­spectable 44 in the first game to add to the 57, but a play­er of his qual­i­ty, at this lev­el, should be aim­ing for scores in ex­cess of 50 (as oth­ers in this World Cup are do­ing, as we will see lat­er).

With one game to go, so much de­pends on him get­ting a cen­tu­ry if the young­sters are to tri­umph against the South Africans.

The South Africans seem, like Afghanistan, a very tough, well-drilled op­po­nent. Judg­ing by their de­feat against Afghanistan and their maul­ing of Tan­za­nia by 329 runs, the young West In­dies will have to play at their full po­ten­tial to de­feat them. Ja­son Rowles of South Africa is cur­rent­ly bat­ting as if he’s play­ing against pri­ma­ry school­ers, be­ing run out for 97 against Afghanistan and com­pil­ing a mas­sive 125 not out vs the Tan­za­ni­ans.

Our bowlers must find a way to dis­miss him be­fore he reach­es his cus­tom­ary 90s to re­strict the South Africans to a score of around 250 and avoid a cat­a­stro­phe. Vic­to­ry has to be achieved with a sol­id bat­ting per­for­mance, some­thing that has not re­al­ly been cap­tured in the first two en­coun­ters; how­ev­er, there is still hope.

The tour­na­ment for­mat is, ac­cord­ing to the ICC, "straight­for­ward." In re­al­i­ty, the routes tak­en by Car­ni­val bands around Port-of-Spain are eas­i­er to un­der­stand. The way the tour­na­ment is for­mat­ted, if the West In­dies fin­ish sec­ond or third, de­pend­ing on the out­come of the game with South Africa, the top three teams from Group A and D will progress to one Su­per Six group, while the top three teams from Group B and C al­so com­bine for a sec­ond Su­per Six group.

The points, wins, and net run rate earned against the oth­er pro­gress­ing Su­per Six teams will be car­ried for­ward. The teams will then play two match­es in the Su­per Six stage against op­po­nents from the oth­er group that fin­ished in a dif­fer­ent group stage po­si­tion. Es­sen­tial­ly, if the West In­dies fin­ish third, they will have to win every re­main­ing game to stay alive. In the "glo­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ty" of crick­et, that’s a po­lite way of say­ing that the West In­dies need a mir­a­cle, as cur­rent­ly, the un­cer­tain­ty is do­ing all the heavy lift­ing.

The se­niors, on the oth­er hand, are in Afghanistan (well, phys­i­cal­ly at least) with a de­plet­ed T20 squad, and by the time you read this, they could have al­ready lost the se­ries.

Afghanistan is a very good T20 squad led by the num­ber one leg spin­ner in the world, Rashid Khan. The squad looks more like a "Who’s That?" than a "Who’s Who." To go to Afghanistan with­out es­tab­lished T20 play­ers like cap­tain Shai Hope, Akeal Ho­sein, Sher­fane Ruther­ford, and Ros­ton Chase is ask­ing for trou­ble. With the SA20 tour­na­ment cur­rent­ly act­ing as a more at­trac­tive em­ploy­er than the na­tion­al jer­sey, eight of the West In­dies’ start­ing eleven were un­avail­able for se­lec­tion due to com­mit­ments in the on­go­ing SA20 tour­na­ment (oth­er ab­sen­tees are Rov­man Pow­ell, Ja­son Hold­er, Ro­mario Shep­herd, and Alzarri Joseph).

One has to won­der: if a se­ries was on the line, would Eng­land, In­dia or Aus­tralia find them­selves sim­i­lar­ly short­hand­ed? It’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, of course. It was a lit­tle sur­pris­ing that the host na­tion didn’t sim­ply look at the West In­dies’ team sheet and ask if they had sent the wrong bus.

Now, it has to be deemed a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for oth­er play­ers to come through and shine and put them­selves in a strong po­si­tion for se­lec­tion for the start of the first ICC Men’s T20 World Cup game vs Bangladesh on Feb­ru­ary 7. It's an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for a young­ster or two to stand up and show what they pos­sess for the tour.

Bat­ting-wise, it's the same old faces. Shim­ron Het­my­er (yes, him again) can stand up as a se­nior bats­man on this tour and lead the way. It’s time for him to lead with his bat rather than just his rep­u­ta­tion. A lot has been said about Quentin Samp­son, and it will be in­ter­est­ing to see how he goes. Fac­ing world-class Afghan spin in Dubai is a bru­tal bap­tism of fire, but if he sur­vives it, we may have a play­er on our hands.

A fi­nal thought on the top­ic of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup start­ing on 7th Feb­ru­ary, as the West In­dies could very well be fac­ing Scot­land in­stead of Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Crick­et Board (BCB) has said that they will not play any World Cup games in In­dia due to “safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty” con­cerns of play­ers amid na­tion­al sen­ti­ments and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing po­lit­i­cal re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries. The ICC has re­port­ed­ly is­sued an ul­ti­ma­tum to the BCB to con­firm their T20 World Cup par­tic­i­pa­tion in In­dia by yes­ter­day or risk be­ing re­placed.

If mem­o­ry serves me well, didn’t In­dia refuse to play games in Pak­istan for the ODI World Cup and all their games were played in In­dia? It’s a clas­sic case of "what’s good for Gopaul is not al­lowed for Seep­aul."

When In­dia re­fused to play in Pak­istan, the sched­ule was re­arranged with the grace of a roy­al wed­ding. But when Bangladesh asks for the same, the ICC sud­den­ly re­mem­bers how to use an ul­ti­ma­tum. As the old say­ing goes, ICC might as well stand for the In­dia Crick­et Coun­cil.

If crick­et is in­deed a game of glo­ri­ous un­cer­tain­ties, the West In­dies are cur­rent­ly its most ded­i­cat­ed prac­ti­tion­ers. Be­tween the U-19s’ quest for a bat­ting pulse and the se­niors’ at­tempt to field a team of ‘avail­able’ play­ers, we are cer­tain­ly pro­vid­ing the world with en­ter­tain­ment, if not re­sults. We await some­thing pos­i­tive from Dubai and South Africa, but un­til then, let’s just hope the young­sters find their feet and the se­niors find their way to the sta­di­um.

To both teams: may your runs be many and your ex­cus­es be few.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er