Squad for West Indies U19 tour announced

The under-19 West Indies squad for tours in South Africa and Zimbabwe has been announced by the West Indies Cricket Board.

The tours are being undertaken as part of the Windies Under-19s’ build-up to the ICC Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand, which takes place from 12 January to 4 February 2018.

Head coach Graeme West said: “First and foremost, we are going to give 15 talented, young players the opportunity to represent the West Indies, experience touring overseas and play youth international cricket.

“We learnt a great deal about a number of the players in the WICB Regional Super50 Tournament. This will be another opportunity to find out which players have the skill sets to perform consistently at this level and establish who is going to stand up when put under pressure by quality opponents.”

West believes his team is “well balanced with a number of multi-dimensional players” and that despite the relatively young age of the group (compared to the previous square) it is “already a very united group that works well together and has a great desire to learn and improve”.

Windies Under-19s are the defending champions, having won their first title in February 2016 in Bangladesh under the leadership of Shimron Hetmyer.

This time the captain is Emmanuel Stewart, with Kirstan Kallicharran as vice captain. They were members of the World Cup-winning squad from last year.

Speaking about expectations going into this tournament, West said: “We want to win both series and establish the patterns of play and combinations that will be taken into the World Cup.

"We will want to see growth and improvement in every game we play and we will want contributions from all members of the squad, so it will be important that the team acclimatises quickly and gets off to a good start."