Leighton Levy, Gleaner Writer

Last week, the team to represent Jamaica at the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) Regional Four-day Championship that starts on January 8, 2010, was named. It reflected the usual names - Tamar Lambert, Odean Brown, Brenton Parchment, Danza Hyatt, Xavier Marshall, among others.

There were a few players not named to the squad who the selectors had hoped would have made the cut but didn't, and that has become a cause for concern.

"When youngsters come to trials they have to come to dominate," said chairman of Jamaica's selectors, Nehemiah Perry.

"We didn't see that this time around. Some of the players got starts but did not carry on."

Not enough runs

Among those players who did not carry on, Perry says, are talented youngsters, batsmen Zeniffe Fowler and John Ross Campbell.

"They never made enough runs, they did not knock the door down," Perry said.

In two four-day trial matches, Fowler scored only 21 runs at an anaemic average of 5.25, while Campbell fared little better, scoring 45 runs at an average of 22.50.

Perry says both players have the ability but he was unable to offer an explanation for why they failed to deliver during the trial matches.

"I know it's not a lack of ability. What I don't know is if it's a lack of concentration and if they took the foot off the gas," he said. "The technical department will have to take a look and see what the problem was."

He said he had a chat with Fowler after the trials and the Manchester batsman blamed himself for his failures. According to Perry, Fowler said he was upset because he was aware he was giving away his wicket. He has not yet been able to speak with Campbell, who plays for Melbourne.

Ricardo Dacres, who hails from St Ann, is six-foot-seven and the type of bowler the selectors have been looking for.

"He has potential and we have been looking for a bowler with height and pace," Perry said of Dacres, who was attending his second trials. "He has good control but he did not get a lot of wickets."

The chief selector said he would love to put players like Dacres on a programme that would aid in his development, but the challenge comes from monitoring his progress because the bowler lives in rural Jamaica.

This is where the players get let down, national coach Junior Bennett says. Bennett, who has been the national cricket coach for the past four years, thinks that the structure of the game, more specifically, the lack thereof, is what hurts the development of the younger players.

"We have talented youngsters but you have to harness the talent," he says. "Talent alone is not the ticket to success."

No resources

The fundamental problem, he says, is that players like Dacres should be monitored at the club level but the clubs just don't have the resources. Such a player should have a set programme and someone should be there to monitor him, but "people have to go to work", Bennett said, explaining that the task of monitoring players is a full-time job, but because clubs and parish associations have no money they are unable to hire full-time coaches to oversee player development.

The lack of money is integral to the slow pace of player development, said Bennett.

"When players leave school they are at a certain standard, but when they go to the clubs there are no facilities," he said.

The coach believes players should have access to indoor facilities equipped with bowling machines, where they can spend hours practising after work, or in the case of Fowler and Campbell, who are university students, after school.

Currently, players get in about 10 to 15 minutes of practice each day, not nearly enough time to properly hone their talent.

Bennett added that clubs should have at least two concrete pitches and a turf pitch. Most do not.

"That makes it difficult for most of these players to move forward at the pace we want them to," he said.