Tour provides Moore with food for thought
There will be very few easy choices for Bermuda head coach David Moore between now and the middle of March when he will name his 14-man squad for the Division Two qualifiers.A two-week training camp to Dubai has certainly given the Australian some indication of which players are best suited to the challenges the April tournament will present, although no-one performed so poorly as to have ruled themselves out.Now Moore has less than two months to take the 15 players that travelled to the Middle East, plus some of those that were left behind, and mould them into a group that can give Bermuda the best possible chance for success.Given that the team won four out of their five games in Dubai, including a convincing eight-wicket win over the senior UAE team, it would seem likely that the core would come from that group of players.The split for the squad is likely to break down into five specialist batsmen, five bowlers, two wicketkeepers, and then two other spots that will largely depend on which areas need most support.With the tournament asking teams to play five games over seven days, then taking at least one extra bowler would seem to be a sensible idea.And given that Jason Anderson and Chris Foggo are likely to be the wicketkeepers, that means the batting is already seven strong.Not that picking the five specialist batsmen is going to be an easy task in itself.Unless something drastic happens, three of those five places seem likely to go to David Hemp, Stephen Outerbridge, and Lionel Cann.That leaves the likes of Dion Stovell, Fiqre Crockwell, Terryn Fray, Irving Romaine, and, as an outside bet, Kamau Leverock, all battling it out for those last two, or three, spots.As with the batting, four of the bowling places are as good as decided, with Stefan Kelly, Malachi Jones, Delyone Borden and Rodney Trott all likely to go, barring injury or illness.Which means Damali Bell, Jordan Desilva, Kyle Hodsoll, Jim West, Kevin Tucker and Justin Pitcher all fighting to secure a place.Bell has come from nowhere in the past six months, and despite an inconsistent tour a good showing before March may well see him included.Certainly there is plenty of competition for places, but there is plenty to work on as well.Over the course of five matches in Dubai, Bermuda gave away an eye-watering 113 runs in extras, a whopping 79 of which were wides, and 24 were no balls.That is clearly unacceptable, not only for the runs it gives up, but also for the pressure that it releases on the opposition, and the bowler that displays a modicum of control in the nets is likely to do themselves the world of good.There is cause for concern in the batting as well, especially with the running between the wickets. Bermuda lost seven wickets to run outs during the trip, and it could easily have been twice as many.Once more the decision making out in the middle was also questionable on occasion, and the number of soft wickets that the side gave away would have cost them dearly against a better team than the UAE Under-19s.The batsmen also struggled to manufacture runs against tight bowling, something even the under-19s were able to do. And waiting to punish the bad ball is not always an option when the run rate is climbing, or falling, and overs are slipping away.What happens in the next two months then will go a long way to determining Bermuda’s future, but that future looks brighter now than it did after the 5-0 thumping the team received at the hands of UAE in July.Possible Bermuda squad: D Hemp, J Anderson, D Bell, D Borden, L Cann, F Crockwell, C Foggo, M Jones, S Kelly, S Outerbridge, J Pitcher, R Trott, D Stovell, J West.