BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Chief se­lec­tor the Most Ho­n­ourable Desmond Haynes be­lieves the open­ing com­bi­na­tion of Kraigg Brath­waite and the un­capped Tage­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, can pay div­i­dends for West In­dies in Aus­tralia de­spite their al­most iden­ti­cal bat­ting styles.

The 26-year-old Chan­der­paul has been in­clud­ed in the 16-man squad for the two-Test se­ries start­ing next month, and in the ab­sence of at­tack­ing open­er John Camp­bell, is ex­pect­ed to part­ner Brath­waite at the top of the or­der.

Both Chan­der­paul and Brath­waite are at­tri­tion­al in their ap­proach, trend­ing more to­wards be­ing oc­cu­piers of the crease rather than flu­ent run-scor­ers, but Haynes said this could prove a boon for West In­dies.

“I be­lieve [they can work well to­geth­er]. I think what you have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion too is with Tage, a young man, he’s got a very good tech­nique to the new ball which is good,” said Haynes, him­self one of Test crick­et’s leg­endary open­ers.

“He leaves alone very well. When you go to places like Aus­tralia, you don’t want to see the num­ber three bats­man com­ing in too ear­ly or the num­ber four.

“So I think he and Kraigg would def­i­nite­ly com­ple­ment each oth­er be­cause at least they would be look­ing at what open­ers should do for a team as well, which is build a foun­da­tion for the side so the guys com­ing in down the or­der would not get the new ball.”

Cap­tain Brath­waite is renowned for his slow bat­ting which has nev­er­the­less yield­ed near­ly 5 000 Test runs at an av­er­age of 34, in­clud­ing 10 hun­dreds.

His pow­ers of con­cen­tra­tion were nev­er more ev­i­dent than in the sec­ond Test against Eng­land at Kens­ing­ton Oval last March when the 29-year-old hit a marathon 160 in the first in­nings and an un­beat­en 56 in the sec­ond.

All told, he spent a com­bined 15 hours and 45 min­utes, along with 673 balls at the crease – a record for a West In­dies bats­man in a sin­gle Test.

Left-han­der Chan­der­paul, mean­while, the son of for­mer Test cap­tain Shiv Chan­der­paul, has scored five first class hun­dreds with an av­er­age of 34. The last of those hun­dreds – 109 against Bangladesh A in St Lu­cia last Au­gust – re­quired 337 balls in 6-¾ hours at the crease.

Haynes, who formed Test crick­et’s most feared open­ing part­ner­ship with Sir Gor­don Greenidge, said the up­com­ing se­ries would be an ex­cel­lent start­ing point for Chan­der­paul’s ca­reer.

“I think it’s a good choice of pick­ing the young man. [There is] no bet­ter place to start your crick­et ca­reer than Aus­tralia where a lot of peo­ple be­lieve if you do well against Aus­tralia then you’re rat­ed,” Haynes ex­plained.

“It’s al­ways been con­sid­ered a tough place to play crick­et and I think he has the abil­i­ty to do it and I want to wish him all the best.

West In­dies are ex­pect­ed to as­sem­ble in Aus­tralia on No­vem­ber 10 and will play a three-day game against an ACT/NSW XI at the Philip Oval in Can­ber­ra start­ing sev­en days lat­er, be­fore fac­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s XI in a four-day match be­gin­ning No­vem­ber 23 at Manu­ka Oval in the same city.

The first Test bowls off in Perth on No­vem­ber 30 with the sec­ond in Ade­laide – a day/night af­fair – sched­uled to start De­cem­ber 8.

CMC