KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – Selectors have named three newcomers in Jamaica’s 13-man squad to face Guyana in their opening game of the Regional First Class Championship starting here Friday.
Simon Jackson, Chadwick Walton and left-arm fast bowler Sheldon Cotterell will wear Jamaica colours for the first time in a squad led by Tamar Lambert.
The trio has been selected at the expense of the more experienced Xavier Marshall, Brenton Parchment and Donovan Pagon who have struggled with the bat in recent time.
“It was a difficult team to select and leave out those players … but at the end of the day the selectors could only name 13 players,” Lambert told the Jamaica Observer newspaper.
“It’s a fairly balanced team and with how the Alpart wicket plays it may help fast bowlers and also spinners so at the end of the day we have a good all-round team.”
Both Jackson and Walton, however, already have first class experience playing for Combined Campuses and Colleges, with Walton having already played two Tests and two One-Day Internationals for West Indies.
Jackson, a 25-year-old left-hander, stroked 135 in the first trial match to get the attention of the selectors while wicketkeeper Walton got the nod especially with Carlton Baugh on West Indies duty. Cotterell, meanwhile, impressed during the recent Caribbean Twenty20 Championship and during the trials.
A left-arm seamer with a fair turn of speed, the 22-year-old will stack up alongside Andrew Richardson and West Indies pacer Jerome Taylor in the fast bowling attack.
SQUAD – Tamar Lambert (captain), Simon Jackson, Danza Hyatt, Brendan Nash, Marlon Samuels, Wavell Hinds, David Bernard Jr, Chadwick Walton, Jerome Taylor, Odean Brown, Bevon Brown, Andrew Richardson, Sheldon Cotterell.
