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IMAGINE that a crisis-ridden England are about to play their first Test of the summer. At No 10, Downing Street, the future of the national team is high on the Cabinet agenda.

It may sound a unlikely scenario but that is exactly what is happening here at the moment. As the once-mighty West Indies today take on Australia, the side who have replaced them as unofficial world champions in the first Test, leaders of the Caribbean governments are meeting in Surinam and among such weighty issues as global trade and economic development is the crisis enveloping West Indies cricket.

Fifteen months ago they suffered a 3-0 clean-up in Pakistan and now they have just returned from a 5-0 whitewash in South Africa. Brian Lara is on notice from the selectors to improve his leadership but West Indies manager Clive Lloyd feels the public ticking-off he received after the South Africa debacle was wrong and would have been better done in private.

``The job of captain here is enormous,'' Lloyd said. ``He is the most important person in the region: above any prime minister or president.''

So at first sight it is strange that the selectors - of which Lloyd is not one - should have chosen no less than six fast bowlers in the 15-man party called up for the game.

This on a Queens Park Oval pitch where international umpire Peter Willey thinks the ball could turn from the start and where Australia will go in with their two leg-spinners, Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill.

Lara underwent a net test on a fractured bone in his right wrist and afterwards declared himself fit to play. With Shivnarine Chanderpaul injured, he is the only recognised batsman still left from South Africa.

New Zealand batsman Craig McMillan has been ruled out of the remaining two Tests against South Africa after breaking his left hand in the drawn first Test.

West Indies (probable): *B C Lara, S L Campbell, S Ragoonath, R Holder, J C Adams, P V Simmons, -R D Jacobs, M Dillon, C E L Ambrose, C A Walsh, R King.

Australia (probable): S R Waugh, M T G Elliott, M J Slater, J L Langer, M E Waugh, G S Blewett, -I A Healy, S C G MacGill, S K Warne, G D McGrath, J N Gillespie.