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Accounts of the West Indies `A' Team in England have been sketchy so we have to await the reports of manager Joel Garner and coach Gus Logie for a proper assessment of the value of the tour, collectively and individually.

Yet the returns have already shown that the responsibility placed on the three young, untried, middle-order batsmen the two Trinidadians, Dwayne Bravo and Lendl Simmons, and the Jamaican, Donovan Pagon has been a little too much, too soon.

All three are undeniably rich in talent, otherwise they would not have been picked. All showed up well in their first appearance in the Busta Cup last season, with Bravo and Pagon scoring hundreds.

Bravo, from the same Santa Cruz birthplace as Brian Lara, is already being compared to the incomparable left-hander.

Simmons, nephew of Phil, is as genuine an all-rounder as they come, his medium-pace bowling and capable wicket-keeping complementing his batting.

Pagon was the second highest scorer in the Youth World Cup in New Zealand in January where Bravo and Simmons were teammates.

But they are young in age and experience. Bravo is 18 with five first-class matches to his name. Simmons is 17 and has three. Neither has passed through the Shell Academy, acclaimed at its inception last year as the finishing school for our players of the future.

Pagon, who just turned 20 and was at the academy last year, is yet to represent Jamaica, playing his three Busta Cup matches last season for West Indies `B'.

Still they have repeatedly found themselves in England all together, among the first six in the order, a challenging obligation against professional county teams. Pagon averaged 17.30 in all matches, Simmons 14.5 and Bravo, the only one with a half-century, 22.9.

Instead of being fast-tracked into the `A' Team, Bravo and Simmons might have been better served with a stint at the academy, whose value appears to have been overlooked by the selectors in favour of on-the-job training.

Several Jamaicans, the respected writer Tony Becca most prominent among them, felt Pagon should have been somewhere behind others such as Brendon Parchment, last year's West Indies Under-19 captain, in the queue.

Now all three have leapfrogged others with a bit more extensive grooming through the academy, the Under-19 team and in the Busta Cup, young players such as Kurt Wilkinson, Tonito Willett, Narsingh Deonarine and Sylvester Joseph.

It is to be assumed that the previous selection panel that chose this team no longer saw an international future for Leon Garrick and Ricardo Powell, both of whom they had already included in West Indies Test and One-Day teams. Both are still in their mid-20s and such a tour would have been of more value to them than for youngsters, regardless of their potential, who were not quite properly prepared.

It is all very well giving youth a chance but the West Indies Cricket Board has put a progression system in place that should be a general guide to selectors Under-19, Academy, Busta Cup, `A' Team, Test team.

The organisation that should be most interested in learning why Carl Hooper did not attend the Test captains' meeting with the International Cricket Council (ICC) in London last week is not the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), but the West Indies Players Association.

The annual get-together was for the captains to put their views, and those of their players, to the governing body of the game on matters that affect them directly.

They clearly would not have been speaking on behalf of their boards for they, after all, are the members that constitute the ICC. They were, in effect, shop stewards putting forward the concerns of their colleagues on working conditions to the company chief executive officer.

Although the WICB acted with proper haste in arranging for Daren Ganga to take Hooper's place, so avoiding the embarrassment of having the solitary vacant seat marked West Indies it really should have been WIPA that made the choice.

That it didn't, presumably because the West Indies captain did not inform its secretary of the situation, affirmed that organisation's continuing lack of cohesion.

There has been a shake-up in its leadership with Dinanath Ramnarine as the new president and Phil Simmons as vice-president.

Ramnarine has spoken of making the association more vibrant and of broadening its membership to include all current and former first-class players in the West Indies.

It is an echo of the sentiments of almost every previous president yet it remains basically a clique of the contemporary Test players.

Ramnarine and his new executive have a lot of work on their hands to achieve their goal. Best of luck to them.

© The Barbados Nation