WHILE in form Barbados batsman Kevin Wickham says he expects his performances to ping the radar of West Indies Test cricket selectors, he is more focused on executing each time he walks to the middle.

Wickham has been the standout player so far in the West Indies Championship three-match bilateral series between Barbados Pride and hosts Jamaica Scorpions.

The 23-year-old middle-order batsman has scored a century on each of the three occasions he has faced the Scorpions this season — twice in the visitors’ opening match loss at Chedwin Park last week and once in the draw at Sabina Park earlier this week.

Wickham’s form before heading to Jamaica had been ominous — he registered two-straight hundreds in intra-squad matches leading up to the tournament.

“I could try my best to put up as many scores as possible but at the end of the day it [gaining the nod of selectors] is out of my control. Obviously, I know I’m putting up good performances so, hopefully, I’ll be there,” he told the Jamaica Observer when asked about him knocking on the door for a Test call-up.

As fate would have it, West Indies have Test assignments on the horizon scheduled for this summer against Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Antigua and Barbuda, and Trinidad and Tobago.

From the time he was a teenager Wickham’s undoubted natural talent had earned him the sometimes burdensome tag as “one for the future” in the eyes of many who closely follow the regional game.

But after making his first class debut for Barbados against Jamaica in February 2023 he hadn’t consistently lived up to that huge expectation.

His start to this campaign has been a different story.

He has shown maturity, exercising patience when the bowling has been tight, but elegantly ruthless against anything loose.

The purple patch has seen his batting statistics blossom exponentially. He averages 43.78 in 35 innings in first class cricket, with six hundreds and four half-centuries.

While not giving away details of how his preparation processes have changed, Wickham has appeared at ease at the crease, unbothered against pacers and spinners, and scoring freely — albeit on pitches which have lacked pace and been mostly good for batting.

“At this moment I’m at the point where I understand my game a lot more and I know I have a better routine in terms of how I go about preparing to play a professional game. That’s working at the moment so I’ll just stick to that routine and continue to do my best,” he said.

Speaking specifically to his century at Sabina Park, he said he had to bide his time against the Scorpions bowlers.

“My aim was just to play as straight as possible and stick to my game plan. The outfield ran very nicely so it wasn’t about taking a lot of risks. It was just about hitting the gaps and running as hard as possible,” Wickham explained.