Coach: National team gifted but players not realizing their potential
By Marlon Munroe
For the second successive year the national cricket team finds itself in a familiar position -the cellar – on a mere seven points after four completed rounds of the West Indies Cricket Board regional four-day competition.
Last year they ended the competition chasing the flock and despite their utterances that this year would have been better, they now find themselves in a position where it is doubtful that they will be able to better their last year’s effort. The team has three matches remaining and lots of ground to make up if they are to avoid the indignity of a second straight cellar position.
Guyana captain Sewnarine Chattergoon is of the opinion that the team is beating itself.
“Our batting is not coming off and also our bowling. Another concern is our fielding which was poor and that cost us the two games that we lost,” Chattergoon told Stabroek Sport yesterday.
He noted, however, that the preparation and talent could not be responsible for the miserable performance and pinpointed some basic areas that caused his team to be out of contention for the championship trophy, a trophy the team has not won since 2002.
Chattergoon estimated that the Guyanese fielders dropped about 10 catches at critical stages of matches.
He made a direct reference to Wavell Hinds of Jamaica who was dropped on 72 before going on to score 151 in the first innings with Jamaica eventually scoring 429 all out after a 239-run, seventh-wicket stand between Hinds and Carlton Baugh (124).
Guyana (166; 236) went on to lose that match by an innings and 27 runs with Assad Fudadin (54) scoring the only half century in the second innings.
the other batsmen in the other teams that went on to get big scores. Most of our batsmen got in and got out and nobody picked up the responsibility,” the left hander said.
The bowlers were equally culpable.
Chattergoon said that the bowlers were sometimes wayward which resulted in teams that
were in dire straits working their way out of trouble thanks to the largesse of the local bowlers.
A case in point, Chattergoon said, was in the match against the Combined Campuses and Colleges who were in dire straits on 28-4, chasing Guyana’s 271.
They recovered to score 239 all out.
“That is also one of our concerns at the moment especially since (Devindra) Bishoo is one of our wicket-taking bowlers and he only has four wickets in three games.
“(On the other hand) I am very impressed with Bess and this was one of his best seasons for Guyana and I hope he can finish the season on a high,” the 28-year-old explained.
Chattergoon also reported that while there were some flat pitches that favoured batting, the CCC wicket at the University of the West Indies campus offered a bit more bounce.
Coach Rabindranauth Seeram said the batsmen did not handle those conditions well and this resulted in Guyana losing to the CCC.
He said that since the team left Guyana a confident bunch, he was disappointed with their
performance and suggested that the players did not properly adapt to the situations while they were abroad.
“Somehow, when they went away their application and dedication to the matches were not evident. I thought we struggled because of the bounce of the wicket at home and patience was one of the key words that the batsmen did not heed because the other teams were more patient,” Seeram pointed out.
He said that his bowlers failed to put the balls in the right areas most of the time and they too were not patient since they tried to experiment too often.
“It was very difficult for the captain to set a field for that and because of this opposing batsmen scored easily,” the coach indicated.
Seeram said that the team’s morale is quite low at the moment and he was extremely disappointed with the team’s performance especially in view of the depth of the unit.
He added that the management team recognized that the players were “gifted but the fact is these players are not realizing their potential.
“What they need to do is go out there and prove that their selection is merited and to perform for themselves and for the public,” Seeram said.
Meanwhile, manager of the team Carl Moore, Guyana Cricket Board president, Chetram Singh, Cricket Development Officer, Reon King and his deputy High Performance Analyst (HPA) Robin Singh all expressed their disenchantment over the team’s repeated bad performances.
HPA Singh was especially harsh and took a swipe at the low standard of Guyana’s cricket. He feels that the club structure is weak, something that coach Seeram also alluded to.
“Things at our club level need to be fixed. There was nothing wrong with the preparation of the team because it was good so there should be no complaints in that area. What happened was when they (players) went out there the standard of cricket that was being played was better than what we were playing,” Singh stated.
King, weighing in on the analysis, said, “Judging from the results of having Jamaica in a bad position and they came back and made 429 runs it tells you one of two things -that there was a good batting wicket or Guyana bowled badly.”