by TONY COZIER

HERE IS A STORY that should interest Hilary Beckles.

No, it's nothing quite so sordid as death threats, but it does reinforce
the University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill principal's continuing campaign to ensure that the cricketing ambitions of talented players should not be frustrated by their simultaneous quest for a university education.

The pertinent case is that of Ruel Brathwaite, the tall, bespectacled Barbadian who was the leading fast bowler in the annual West Indies Under-19 Tournament between 2002 and 2004.

Since then, Brathwaite has vanished off the regional cricket radar, simply because he has gone abroad, to England to be precise, to study.

As a result of his academic and cricket ability at Queen's College,
he earned a scholarship to Dulwich College, one of Britain's premier secondary schools, where Bill Athey, an England batsman of the 70s, is cricket coach.

As Athey relates, Brathwaite's scholastic and sporting achievements
at Dulwich won him a further scholarship to Loughborough University, "the best sporting university in [Britain]".

He is pursuing a civil engineering degree, with two more years before graduation, and representing their strong cricket team. He has played for Leceicestershire and Surrey in second XI county cricket and for the combined British Universities, claiming three wickets in Sri Lanka's opening match of their England tour last summer.

According to Athey, in Barbados over the past fortnight with the 29th annual Rumsey Tournament, Surrey would have offered him a contract if he had
a British passport.

Alternatively, Brathwaite could qualify by residence as an English player and be eligible to represent England,
as so many West Indians have done
in the past.

"He wants to be a professional cricketer and those are the choices before him," Athey said. "But, for Ruel, there is no choice. He is absolutely adamant that he wants to play for Barbados and the West Indies".

"It seems to me to be not right
that a boy gets an opportunity to study at one of the best universities overseas and his cricket is affected," Athey said. "It's an opportunity a lot of boys in Barbados would love to have."

It is precisely the point Beckles has made for some time and is striving
to put right through his efforts at UWI.

Brathwaite is in a somewhat different position to a student based in Barbados, or anywhere in the Caribbean for that matter, but Beckles might be able
to arrange for a transfer from Loughborough to UWI that would enhance his prospects of fulfilling his dream and bringing a fine young fast bowler back to West Indies cricket.

Athey's plea on Brathwaite's behalf is timely, if coincidental, as the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) last week named what it has called the Academy Committee to, among other things, pursue "linkages" with the UWI, the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) and the WICB's original academy, at St George's University in Grenada.

It has O.K. Melhado, the Jamaican business executive who is deputy chairman of Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007, as head, and includes Beckles.

It should not be beyond its ingenuity to devise a system that guarantees that those, like Brathwaite, studying and playing overseas are not lost to the West Indies cricket but, like the track and field stars in the United States, gain the experience and competition to enhance their standards.