Dear Editor,
The Rose Hall Town Youth and Sports Club would like to place on record its total disgust and surprise at the non-selection of Royston Crandon on the National 20/20 squad to play in the 2008 Edition of the Stanford Tournament. Since the announcement of the squad, our Club Office has been bombarded by hundreds of phone calls from cricket administrators across Guyana, journalists and cricket fans who all wanted to know what the RHTYSC would do, in face of this gross injustice to a player who is ideally suited to this version of the game.
There are very few cricketers in Guyana who can be considered 20/20 specialists but Royston Crandon is certainly one of them. No local batsman can hit the ball harder or cleaner in this type of cricket while he is a brilliant fielder and bowls his four overs of off spin very tidily.
A quick check of his 20/20 records at the local first division and inter-county levels would support the above statement. In the Pepsi/Carib National 20/20 tournament for the RHT Windies Sports Bar Team in 3 matches he scored 225 runs at an average of 75 including 98 off 42 balls versus Skeldon and 88 versus Kildonan off 36 balls.
He also bowled twelve overs taking 8 wickets at an average of 3.62 runs per wicket and a run rate of 2.4 per over. For Berbice, his performance while not out- standing was impressive, but then there was hardly any outstanding individual performances.
A glance at the squad would reveal that it consists of a batsman most suitable to the longer version of the game, an all rounder who is only interested in the financially rich 20/20 tournament and another who only played cricket at the local level when his county dropped him from the squad.
The selection of the squad was thrown into light when the nation was informed by Kaieteur News that one selector/coach and the national captain were not consulted. I have been involved in cricket at the club level for 10 years now and nothing surprises me anymore in Guyana’s cricket , but I am sure they could have been contacted.
The RHTYSC is pleased that a lot of cricket board officials at the local level has indicated their displeasure at the non-selection of Royston Crandon and now call on them to let their colleagues know how they feel.
Yours faithfully,
Moonish Singh
Public Relations Officer
