Bichel believes PNG are ready for Canada

Andy Bichel believes that next week's ICC U19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier will be an excellent test for Papua New Guinea's U/19 site.

"This is a big test for our boys, playing against some of the best established cricket nations," said Bichel, who is now the National Coaching Director.

"There are some exceptionally strong teams from some countries which have fully established cricket academies, big budgets and many overseas players. Countries like Canada, USA, Netherlands, Ireland and Hong Kong all have exceptional programmes that annually produce quality players," said Bichel.

"This event will genuinely show us exactly where we are at with our program. It will allow us to Benchmark whether our potential can match our expectation" stressed Bichel.

"General Manager of Cricket PNG, Bill Leane has set us the task to finish in the TOP 3 in the Tournament and this will mean that every game is critical and in this type of Tournament there are no easy games."

Cricket PNG has named two new faces into the squad that represented PNG and convincingly won in the East Asia Pacific tournament in May. The two changes see Roge Roge (Raukele Club POM) and Mea Daniel Ao (Mobil STC Club POM) replacing Ao Mea (United CC) and Lega Siaka (United CC).

"The boys are ready for the challenge and our preparation could not be better" said Andy Bichel. "Cricket PNG is sending along a fulltime highly respected Physio in Michael Wilson to ensure our boys are well recovered and able to perform on all of the nine days of competition.

"We have organised pool sessions and ice baths after every game. We have even pre-booked High Carb and protein meals in consultation with the chef at the hHotel where they are staying so that they eat well and eat food that they are used to", said Bichel.