Bravo's all-round ability adds balance to tourists

In his two years as chief selector, now at an end after a messy split with the board and the players' union, Sir Viv Richards brought 10 players in their late teens or early 20s into the West Indies Test team.

Although his commitment for the West Indies tour has now switched to BBC radio commentary, Richards will take particular interest in yet another young West Indies player who makes his Test debut at Lord's today.

The former West Indies captain, whose panel chose the team for this series prior to his controversial exit, is confident that Dwayne Bravo, who turned 20 in April, can become the all-rounder the West Indies have long needed.

"We've seen what a difference players like Jacques Kallis and Andy Flintoff make to their teams," Richards noted during the preceding NatWest series of one-day internationals when Bravo's nippy medium-pace swing and variations made him the leading wicket-taker. "Bravo could develop into our Kallis." Bravo comes not only with an appropriate surname but an impressive background.

He was born in Santa Cruz in Trinidad, the same village where Brian Lara saw the first light of day 15 years earlier, and came through the ranks of the same Queen's Park club teams.

His potential, like Lara's, was evident from an early age but it has been his rapid improvement over the past three seasons that supports the optimism felt by Richards.

When he was picked (by an earlier group of selectors) for the West Indies A team's tour of England in 2002, aged 18, Bravo was a talented batsman and fleet-footed fielder who occasionally sent down a few overs of medium-pace.

While he averaged 43 with the bat against the counties, his bowling merited only five overs. Two years later, he was the leading all-rounder in the West Indies' first-class Carib Beer tournament, with 418 runs in seven matches at an average of 37.5 and 28 wickets at 13.46 apiece.

Now his deceptive pace, swing and variation as first change will be as important to the West Indies at Lord's over the next few days as the runs he makes at No 7. He announced himself on the current tour with a 63-ball, unbeaten 100 against Ireland, a wasted effort in a match the West Indies infamously lost.

He followed it with a man of the match performance of 3 for 26 from 10 overs in the victory over England in the first match of the triangular NatWest series. Brought back to earth when his 10 overs were clobbered for 82 two matches later at Lord's by Flintoff and Andrew Strauss - coincidentally his first two international wickets in Guyana three months earlier - he still ended with more wickets in the tournament than anyone.

As he has grown stronger and fitter with more cricket and stricter attention to training and diet demanded at the highest level, he has impressed with the lively pace he generates from a quick arm action.

A batsman with a typically belligerent West Indian approach, he comes into the Test with a dashing 117, with two sixes and 17 fours, against Sri Lanka A at Shenley in his last match.