Big tournament great chance for young players

Dayle Hadlee and Ross Taylor at naming of New Zealand Under-19 World Cup preliminary squad Photograph © CricInfo

Next year's International Cricket Council Under-19 World Cup will be attended by more than 400 players and officials and will be a bigger event than last year's CricInfo Women's World Cup.

Fifty-four games will be played during the month of action which involves 16 teams, compared to 31 games for eight teams in the women's event.

New Zealand Cricket's chief executive Martin Snedden said: "It is a privilege and honour for New Zealand Cricket to host this event."

New Zealand yesterday named a preliminary trial squad of 19 who will attend the High Performance Centre on December 12-13.

"They will be under the tutelage of (coach) Mark Greatbatch who will work with them to develop their one-day skills and they will play two matches. Hopefully they will go away with a better appreciation of how to play one-day cricket," team manager Dayle Hadlee said.

Only four players - captain Ross Taylor, Rob Nicol, Iain Robertson and Jesse Ryder - who played for New Zealand Under-19 in their series victory over South Africa are eligible for selection.

Those selected will be attempting to follow in the footsteps of previous Under-19 World Cup players like Chris Cairns, Brian Lara, Mike Atherton, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Andrew Caddick, Sanath Jayasuriya, who all played in the inaugural event in 1988, while more recent New Zealand internationals at later World Cups have been Lou Vincent and James Franklin.

The squad was chosed by youth team selectors Bruce Morrison, John Howell and Dayle Hadlee.

A thorough selection process has been undertaken to search for talent in New Zealand with talent identification clinics held at each of the major associations.

The selectors will also be attending the Gillette Cup finals to keep an eye out for any players who may have been missed.

The final team selection will be on January 2 and the team will assemble at Lincoln on January 9 before playing three pre-tournament warm-up games. These will be against Canterbury 'A' on January 11, the England side on January 15 and Pakistan on January 17.

Hadlee said he believed that along with the National Under-19 Tournament the playing programme will have the team pretty much on track and match-hardened going into the event.

Greatbatch said he wasn't going to tell anyone how far he thought the New Zealand team could get in the tournament.

"It will be a very unique experience to play on home soil (for the selected players)," he said.

The trialists are (five to be added): Ross Taylor (captain, Central Districts), Scott Baldwin (Central Districts), Geoff Barnett (Central Districts), Michael Bates (Auckland), James Bullick (Auckland), Greg Cates (Auckland), Craig Clare (Central Districts), Brooke Hatwell (Northern Districts), Fraser Hawes (Canterbury), Greg Hay (Central Districts), Stephen Murdoch (Wellington), Rob Nicol (Auckland), Iain Robertson (Canterbury), Jessie Ryder (Central Districts), Ian Sandbrook (Central Districts), Robbie Schaw (Central Districts), Lance Shaw (Auckland), Jordan Sheed (Otago), Richard Sherlock (Central Districts).