BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Chief se­lec­tor Roger Harp­er has stout­ly de­fend­ed the shock se­lec­tion of un­capped teenaged fast bowler Jay­den Seales, ar­gu­ing that the T&T tal­ent glar­ing lack of ex­pe­ri­ence was su­per­seded by his “en­thu­si­asm” and wick­et-tak­ing abil­i­ty.

The 19-year-old Seales was named on Tues­day in a 13-man squad to face South Africa in the open­ing Test start­ing on Thurs­day at the Daren Sam­my Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in St Lu­cia.

Seales, how­ev­er, has nev­er played a re­gion­al first class match but Harp­er con­tend­ed his per­for­mances in two re­cent West In­dies in­ter-squad warm-up games had tilt­ed the scales in his favour.

“I saw a young bowler per­form in those games when Test play­ers and the best of our re­gion­al first class play­ers were play­ing, and he per­formed ex­ceed­ing­ly well, bet­ter than a num­ber of play­ers that have been play­ing first class crick­et over a num­ber of years,” Harp­er told a me­dia con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the squad.

“The match was not named a first class match but those match­es were played by the best of our first class play­ers and he per­formed ex­ceed­ing­ly well.

“So I would like to think if he can per­form well in those games against those play­ers he has the po­ten­tial to trans­fer that on­to the Test scene.”

Seales took four wick­ets in the first in­ter-squad match back in March, none of his vic­tims boast­ing any ex­ten­sive Test ex­pe­ri­ence.

And in last week’s sec­ond in­ter-squad game, the right-armer claimed a five-wick­et match haul, in­clud­ing an im­pres­sive four-wick­et sec­ond in­nings ef­fort when he knocked over the ex­pe­ri­enced duo of Dar­ren Bra­vo and Shai Hope.

Harp­er said Seales had ex­hib­it­ed ex­cit­ing qual­i­ties in those two match­es, which had con­vinced the se­lec­tion pan­el of his readi­ness for the high­est lev­el.

“He’s im­pressed the pan­el with his pace, with his en­thu­si­asm, the fact that he is will­ing to run in, he gets move­ment and he’s proven to be a wick­et-tak­er,” Harp­er said of the play­er with a sin­gle wick­et from his on­ly first class game against New Zealand A last De­cem­ber, when he was among the trav­el­ling re­serves for West In­dies’ two-Test tour of New Zealand.

“A num­ber of per­sons have asked the ques­tion about the fact he’s played on­ly one first class game.

“You have to take the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, the fact that we haven’t had re­gion­al crick­et, but we’ve had match­es where all per­sons in­volved were first class play­ers and a huge num­ber of them, more than 60 per cent have played Test crick­et.”

Seales came to promi­nence at last year’s ICC Un­der-19 World Cup when he fin­ished with 10 wick­ets as Young West In­dies bowed out at the quar­ter-fi­nal stage.

He was then fast-tracked in­to the se­nior team set­up and fol­low­ing the New Zealand tour, re­mained with the West In­dies squad for the two-Test se­ries against Sri Lan­ka in march as a “de­vel­op­men­tal play­er”.

Seales gets the nod ahead of 24-year-old speed­ster Keon Hard­ing who was a re­serve on last year’s Test tour of Eng­land and who made his one-day de­but in Bangladesh ear­li­er this year, but sur­pris­ing­ly failed to make the re­cent 17-man pro­vi­sion­al squad for the up­com­ing se­ries.

And even though the Bar­ba­di­an stood out in the last first class sea­son with 29 wick­ets and has tak­en 54 from 17 first class match­es over­all, Harp­er stressed Seales was “best placed” to rep­re­sent West In­dies at the mo­ment.

“Keon Hard­ing no doubt has tremen­dous po­ten­tial and I think go­ing for­ward, he con­tin­ues to im­prove and de­vel­op his skill,” Harp­er ex­plained.

“Of course he will play a tremen­dous part but at this point we think that Jay­den Seales is best placed among the fast bowlers to serve the pur­pose that we’re look­ing for at this point.”

(CMC)