The outing is against Australia, of whom Allan Border, their coach and esrtwhile test captain, admits is a ``useful and comptent side'' for the MTN sponsored event.

As most if the 16 sides taking part in the tournament arrived on Wednesday or yesterday, interest among a number of players centred on the South Africa-Australian game at Potch University. Just the sort of rural setting for the player with most still being students.

Street, South Africa's captain, has been pushed into the wicketkeeping duties through the enforced absence of Morne van Wyk who has a date today for Free State against Western Province in a Standard Bank Cup quarter-final.

While the South African management are quite happy to grant Van Wyk a 24-hour leave of absence to play for his province, Border raised his eyebrows when told of the position. But he indicated he too, would support such a move so long as it did not upset the balance of the squad.

South Africa have been drawn in an opposite pool to the lads from Oz. The South African contingent are in the Gavaskar Pool along with India, Kenya and Scotland. Australia are in the Cowdrey pool with Zimbabwe, the West Indies and Paupa New Guinea.

In an interesting pre-opening media conference yesterday, India and South Africa held their own friendly get together, whith the accent from both team managements that the under-19 World Cup is about long-term development of test players and learning to handle the pressures.

India are to likely to have a pre-tournament bash with Kenya who approached them yesterday while the other sides seem to be content with net sessions to stretch their limbs in so-called sunny Gauteng where the rain never stops.

Both Anton Ferreira, the South African coach, and Krish Srikkanth, who was a test all-rounder for India emphasised the important role of the tournament and its usefulness as a step toward the A teams and eventually the test or ODI teams.

And they concurred with Border that the number of sides and the countries of origin of some teams showed that there was a grass-roots level that went far beyond the tournament held in Australia 10 years ago. ``I feel that much good will come out of this tournament as a number of players will get their first taste of what the game at international level is all about,'' Srikkanth said.

Perhaps another Brian Lara or Inzamam-ul-Huq may emerge from the ranks of the 16 teams; with so many players around, anything is possible and progress of those who do impress is going to be closely monitored.

Trevor Chesterfield Cricket writer Pretoria News tche@ptn.independent.co.za

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