GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Robert Hyatt, the manager/coach of Jamaica’s team at the Caribbean Junior and Cadet Table Tennis Championship, has praised the quality of the tournament.
Speaking to reporters on the second day of the championship at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall, Hyatt said he had been very impressed with the standard of play exhibited so far at the championship.
A former player and brother of Michael Hyatt, who represented Jamaica at the Olympic Games, Hyatt told the media that he was pleasantly surprised by the improvement and development that had taken place in the sport since his last visit to Guyana in 1988.
The Jamaican, who also manages the High Performance Table Tennis Centre of Excellence back home, disclosed that from what he had seen here in Guyana , the sport seems to be making a comeback, while paying tribute to the support the sport receives from the Government.
“Clearly there seems to be a wonderful programme here, I am impressed with the organisation of the tournament, not only the hosting, but how Guyana was able to put together the standard of players that are competing in the competition,” Hyatt recognized.
He called on governments and business entities in the respective countries that are participating in the current tournament to do more for the game which according to him has numerous benefits.
“Only recently, I bounced into former West Indies fast bowler Courtney Walsh on a flight and was telling him about the (High Performance) Centre and because I know that he conducts a bowling clinic back home I took the opportunity to discuss the possibility of him bringing over some of the youths to the facility.
“I told him about the benefits of playing table tennis which can assist in improving hand/eye co-ordination and also helps with lateral movements, all of which are very important ingredients for a cricketer and he agreed that it was a good observation and was going to investigate the likelihood of us linking,” Hyatt said.
He added that Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica have some very good players who should form the core for the future of the sport in the Caribbean and to his mind if they continue on the same path and challenge each other frequently, would soon be able to compete with the Latin Americans.
Asked to compare the period when he played to the present, Hyatt responded by saying that his answer has to be two-fold.
“It’s a two-fold way to answer that question, back in our days, the level was a bit higher and I say this because some juniors were capable of beating a few seniors, but now and this is no fault of the current crop, they don’t seem to be able to do that.”
He indicated that the current situation was so because many of the top players had migrated for various reasons and that development had left a void in the tennis arena.
Some of the reasons he cited were that the new players did not have the privilege of playing against players of quality and when you added the lack of proper coaching expertise and sparse competition among each other to improve, all those factors contributed to the decline in standard.
“However, I must say that a few guys have stayed around just for the sake of giving back unselfishly to the sport which I feel is a good thing.”
