Alick Athanaze: A star is born
Will Alick Athanaze be the next star batter off the West Indies production line?
Last year I had the opportunity to interview Dominica’s Alick Athanaze following his back to back centuries in the Super 50 tournament for the Windward Islands Volcanoes.
The centuries turned many a head in the Caribbean but Athanaze was a batter who had first come to attention for being the leading run scorer in the 2018 Under 19 World Cup.
Heralded as the rising star of the tournament Athanaze by his own admission had failed to deliver on his obvious potential when transitioning to Men’s senior cricket.
While things have now started to click in late 2022 and early 2023 it was the clear potential prior to that which prompted me to tell Jo Harman at Wisden (in May 2022) that the 24 year old Athanaze was one of four WI batters under 25 that world cricket should look out for.
Such is the shallow nature of the proven West Indies talent pool that there is no point in judging players on stats alone. At the time of my proclamation Athanaze only averaged a modest 25 in FC cricket but in West Indies cricket you have to determine if the players passes the eye test to truly assess their worth.
Athanaze does that and then some but it is only now that he has three domestic hundreds to his name that people will feel a West Indies call up is warranted.
Like Tagenarine Chanderpaul before him and Keacy Carty in the future all have the basic fundamentals that suggest they are suited to the rigours of test cricket.
The Windward Islands have gone one step further this year by entrusting Athanaze with the captaincy for the West Indies Championship, a nod to his leadership capabilities and a further sign of how highly rated he is within some quarters
If as seems likely Athanaze receives his maiden call up to the West Indies test squad for the tour of South Africa. Maybe we will indeed look back on this as the moment when a star was born.
I penned an original article about Alick Athanaze for the official West Indies website in November 2022 - you can read that here.
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