By Tony Becca - From The Boundary 
Tony Becca
THE regional four-day cricket tournament is scheduled to get under way on January 28, and although victory will depend on what happens on the field, Jamaicans should be happy with the players selected to go hunting.
With batsmen Christopher Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Marlon Samuels and Ricardo Powell plus fast bowler Jermaine Lawson in the West Indies squad for the World Cup and therefore unavailable, Jamaica, like others in the hunt, will not be at full strength for most of the tournament.
Such is the healthy state of Jamaica's cricket, however, that even without Gareth Breese who is nursing an injury there were a number of good players still available - particularly among the young generation - and the selectors have done a good job in the selection of the 16-man squad.
The selectors, chairman Ruddy Williams, Linden Wright, Courtney Daley and captain Robert Samuels, should be commended for a job well done for two reasons.
Reason number one is that faced with the opportunity to expose the country's good and promising young players, they have rewarded those who performed as Jamaica and West Indies Youth players, and even though the four matches were billed as practice matches and not trial matches, those who performed in them.
Reason number two is that in selecting six specialist batsmen, four pace bowlers, one offspinner, one left-arm legspinner, one right-arm legspinner, one allrounder, and two wicketkeepers, they have put together a nicely balanced squad - a squad that, certainly as far as bowling is concerned, has left them with options.
In other words, for each match they will be able to select an attack based on the opposition and the pitch.
With Robert Samuels, Leon Garrick and Mario Ventura, Brenton Parchment, Donovan Pagon and Maurice Kepple as the six batsmen, with Franklyn Rose and Audley Sanson, Daren Powell and schoolboy Jerome Taylor as the four pace bowlers, and with offspinner Nehemiah Perry, left-arm spinner Ryan Cunningham and right-arm legspinner Odean Brown as the three spin bowlers, the squad is also a nice balance of experience and youth.
Following on the vision demonstrated in the selection of the 30 players called to the original squad, the squad is also nicely balanced as far as development is concerned.
In Brown, David Bernard Jnr, Keith Hibbert and Matthew Sinclair, the squad includes not only a young right-arm legspinner, not only a young allrounder who bowls lively medium-pace, but also two wicketkeepers.
The presence of two wicketkeepers in the squad, an unusual situation these days at every level, is really a good move - not only because it will encourage wicketkeepers, but also because it will keep the one selected in the final eleven on his toes.
The squad selected to represent Jamaica does not guarantee victory. In demonstrating confidence in the youngsters who performed, however, in selecting certain types of players and different types of players, and in coming up with such a wonderful blend, the selectors, who appear to have really put some thought into it, have so far done a good job.
