By Marlon Munroe
At a press conference yesterday in the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) boardroom, GCB President Chetram Singh and his executives rolled out a developmental plan to lift Guyana’s cricket out of its current quandary.
Singh lamented that the board is cognizant that over the past three years Guyana cricketers have not been performing “well” at home and on the regional front in all formats of the game. He said that for the past few months the executive body has been thinking seriously about what they want to see happen to improve the current state of affairs and stop the declining trend “to an extent”.
He said that, “The first decision taken by the GCB executives is that we should look at the various competitions we have in Guyana to see whether or not they fit into our needs and at our last executive meeting the board decided to form a committee which would look at the immediate future of cricket in Guyana.”
The committee is comprised of the presidents of the county boards, other cricket officials and important stakeholders. Singh said that the committee met two Fridays ago and drafted a plan that they think might possibly help the board to lift the standard of the game, if it is executed properly.
“We decided to tackle the cricket at the senior level and at the very junior level, meaning the under-15 and also to look at women’s cricket at the moment. You are all aware that we recently hosted the senior regional women’s competition (WICB Senior Women’s Challenge Tournament) and we felt that our team could have performed better with some more training and possibly with some more help,” the long standing president explained.
The current structure of cricket in Guyana sees the county boards running off their competitions and then the GCB takes over the reins and runs the inter-county championships in preparation for regional competitions.
However, the GCB now intends to assist the various boards, especially since the board feels that there is need for more three-day cricket for the development of the senior cricketers.
“Unfortunately there were no three-day competitions, the live wire for senior cricket, and over the last two years there has actually been none organised by any of the counties for whatever reasons. The GCB is now going to assist counties, especially Demerara and Berbice with their three-day competitions and Essequibo with their two-day format so that the senior cricketers will have a longer competition rather than the limited overs and the Twenty20 that they are playing now,” Singh explained.
GCB now hopes that the structure becomes a national one in terms of each county completing their competitions, either run by the county or directed by the GCB.
Additionally, the GCB will fully finance these ventures if there is no sponsor when this structure is implemented later in the year.
The rationale behind this structure is to ascertain the champion club in each county and then have a champion of champions nationwide three-day playoff tournament. Further, he stated that this would add some excitement to the game and for the clubs to aspire to something greater.
He envisioned that the prize money can be at least one million dollars so that all teams and all the other winning categories will receive an amount that is feasible. He said that while all these plans are in their embryonic phase, these projects are estimated to cost from $15-$17 million.
Marketing representative of the GCB Ramsey Ali said that the board will be embarking on fundraising ventures to “package Guyana’s cricket”. The first one will be the Guyana Cricket Twenty20 Festival on October 23-24 at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence that will feature Guyana’s national team, Barbados, Jamaica and Guyana-USA.
There will also be a super concert on the last night with headliners, that are not yet known, from the Caribbean and Guyana.
Meanwhile, the schools’ under-15 40-over tournament is scheduled to commence on September 16 with 150 schools participating. Chairman of the board’s Competitions Committee for schools and female cricket Colin Europe said that the competition will be run in districts as is done with the Ministry of Education/Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) Annual National Schools Track and Field championships.
He said that the GCB has received the support of the Ministry of Education and some head teachers to run the tournament. He said that a qualified coach has been assigned to the schools that will be participating in the tournament.
