The West Indies Under 19 team have gone undefeated in their group and proceed to the quarter finals after wins against England, Australia and most recently Nigeria. The young Windies players have impressed so far in the campaign showing great skill and maturity, as well as demonstrating raw talent and brutal power.
Quick bowler Jayden Seales and seaming all-rounder Nyeem Young have particularly impressed with the ball during the tournament having taken eight and six wickets respectively.
Seales has bowled with excellent pace throughout the tournament, often reaching the late 130’s on the speed gun. His raw speed has often been far too much to handle for the young batsman, and has drawn the highest percentage of false shots from seamers to bowl a minimum of 100 balls in the competition.
The West Indies have also scored heavily with the bat, totalling up 649 runs from their three matches, the most of any team to complete their three allotted group games so far. They score just below 31 run per wicket lost, the third highest average in the tournament currently behind India and Afghanistan.
Out of the eleven players to have scored 100 runs or more in the tournament, three are West Indian. Captain Kimani Melius, Kevlon Anderson and Nyeem Young are those on the list, with the latter currently the West Indies leading run scorer in the tournament with 129 runs at a strike rate of 110.25. The West Indies are the only team to have more than one batsman score over 100 runs in the tournament.
The innings of the tournament so far for the West Indies goes to Kevlon Anderson for his unbeaten knock of 86 against England in Kimberley.
Anderson showed a clear affinity for scoring in front of square on the legside, making 60.3% of his runs through this zone. He favoured attacking the quicker bowlers, scoring 56 runs from the 56 pace deliveries he faced. He was deadly when the England seamers missed their yorkers scoring 20 runs from the 8 deliveries he faced that were slightly short or full of their intended target. It was an innings showing excellent maturity and control, with only 14.8% false shots played.
After sealing an unbeaten group stage with a mammoth 246 run win over Kenya, which was the twelfth biggest defeat in U19 World Cup history, the Windies will be extremely confident going forward into the knockout stages of the competition, where they will face a tough test against New Zealand.
-CWI
