Vanuatu cricket predicting bright future

Vanuatu Cricket believes the future is bright for the senior men's team despite missing out on promotion.

The Melanesian side finished third at World Cricket League 6 this month, with only the top two elevated to division five.

Vanuatu also fell one place short of promotion two years ago.

But the President of Vanuatu Cricket, Mark Stafford, believes the team will only get better.

"The Norwegian coach, who saw us a couple of years ago, felt that our entire cricket presence: skills, attitude, capacity and performance has probably increased a good 50 percent in the last two years. We do take some quite good positives out of this programme and the captain [Andrew Mansale] is 28, [vice-captain] Jono Dunn is 26 and everyone else is less than 24 and six are less than 21. It's a bright future for a team going forward".

Mark Stafford says their schedule for the next couple of years is thin at this point but they hope to find some matches and have some of their players earn contracts with club teams around the world.