Sixteen-year-old Alexei Kervezee will become the tenth youngest ODI player of all time if he is chosen to play against Sri Lanka in the two matches in Amstelveen next week. If he takes part in the first of those games, on 4 July, he will be 16 years and 296 days old.

The youngest-ever international is reputed to be Pakistan’s Hasan Raza, whose age is given as 14 years 233 days when he was included for a match against Zimbabwe at Quetta in 1996-97. He had supposedly become the youngest Test player when he made his debut a week earlier, but Wisden warns that the claim ‘should be treated with extreme caution’, noting that Raza’s age has been rejected by the Pakistan Cricket Board.

Next in line is Mohammad Sharif of Bangladesh, who is said to have been 15 years 116 days when he played against Zimbabwe in Harare in 2000-01. Then there’s a much larger group of sixteen-year-olds, led by Aqib Javed (Pakistan) and including such distinguished company as Shahid Afridi and Sachin Tendulkar.

Kervezee was born in Walvis Bay, Namibia – long before Namibian deliveries became a fashion item among the Hollywood A list – on 11 September 1989. He made his first-class debut in an Intercontinental Cup match against Scotland in Utrecht on 29 July last year, at the age of 15 years 319 days. He has since established himself as a regular member of the Dutch side, and will become the second-youngest player to take part in a World Cup match, after Talha Jubair of Bangladesh, if he plays in any of The Netherlands’ group matches in St Kitts in March 2007.