Tomorrow's opening match brings together Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana at Guaracara Park, on Friday it will be Jamaica versus the Leeward Islands at Sabina Park and Barbados against the Windward Islands at Kensington Park, and in the weeks leading up to the final, which is scheduled to start on March 20, the contest should be close and exciting.

Cricket fans, however, are hoping, not so much for close games and exciting action, not so much that their team will emerge as champions, but more so for high quality play. The wish, right around the region, is for top quality performances by the players who they hope will step up and address the West Indies selectors in a bid win places on the beleaguered West Indies team.

Never before, certainly not since the first regional championship in 1966, has there been so many places up for grabs on the West Indies team, and the opportunity is there for young players to parade not only their skill but also their class and force the selectors to call on them in an effort to change the recent fortunes of the West Indies team.

To do so, however, the players need to score runs and plenty of them. They can no longer be satisfied with looking good or playing one good, substantial innings and expecting selection because of their potential. They need to burst open the door with an avalanche of runs. And the opportunity for that is also there.

Looking at the schedule of matches for the Busta Cup, all five rounds of the championship plus the semi-finals will be played before the first Test against Australia - enough time for the players to score runs at home and away.

In the recent past, the young batsmen allowed past failures, like Roland Holder and, to an extent, Keith Arthurton, to upstage them in the regional competition and, faced with no alternative, the selectors were forced to fall back on them.

Cricket fans who have witnessed the poor technique of batsmen like Clayton Lambert, Philo Wallace, Stuart Williams and Floyd Reifer and the carelessness of some of them are now praying that young players around the region, batsmen like Christopher Gayle who is making his debut, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Sylvester Joseph who need to convert their potential into performance, will dominate the proceedings and inspire the selectors to look ahead rather than behind.