Amidst the crippling power struggle among some in the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) executive, High Performance Analyst (HPA) and national coach Rabindranauth Seeram has decided that if there should be development there must be constant upgrading.

Stabroek Sport understands that it was the joint initiative of Seeram and GCB president Chetram Singh, along with the input of West Indies middle order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul, to conduct an elite coaching programme for the country’s top cricketers.
Singh and Seeram believe that for too long national cricketers have been returning home one tournament after tournament and nothing was  done to adequately iron out the deficiencies of the players.

And, the reality remains that Guyana continues to slip into the lower tier of regional cricket after once boasting a reputation of being among the top echelons. Further, cricket at home slipped to an all-time unprecedented low.

“We recognized that when players came home they had nothing to do and we thought that the board was not helping in a sense so we (Singh and Seeram) thought that we should organise something for the cricketers. So, between myself and Robin it was thought that this was the best thing for the cricketer.

“We come back from tours and nobody does anything for the guys until a next tournament starts. We think that there should be ongoing progress for the players so that they can continue training all the time,” Seeram explained.

When Stabroek Sport visited the Guyana National Stadium yesterday Chanderpaul and his son Tagenarine along with national players Leon Johnson, Vishal Singh, West Indies Under-19 batsman Trevon Griffith, Assad Fudadin were all working with Singh on the bowling machine.
Singh pointed out that he is focusing on the batsmen to get them back into cricket mode especially since many of them have been inactive after the conclusion of the regional tournament last month. The HPA and deputy Cricket Development Officer (CDO) in the GCB said that the video analysis of the programme will start on Wednesday.

On the other hand, Seeram said that he hopes that the players recognize that their level of play has to be raised. He indicated that the purpose of the programme is for improvement but he also posited that he is unsure whether it will be possible for personnel to visit matches to ascertain whether players have improved.

“We will do an off field assessment and we will start filming them from Wednes-day. But I think that Robin as the video analyst can go around to matches to highlight some of the problems our players are having and we can review what is being done right or wrong and we make the adjustments,” Seeram said.

He also noted that he does not know whether the problem of our senior players is psychological or whether it is the result to players being trained by different coaches. Anyway, Seeram hopes this will be clarified through the programme, which will run for an extended period.

“We want these players to have the basic right and then we can continue from there. We are planning to review what they have just done in the practice session rather than wait until a tournament; this is the fine tuning period,” the former national middle order batsman explained.

According to Seeram another reason that prompted the programme was the fact that many of the players have made a lot of runs at the club level but have failed at the regional level. He believes that this is a cancer especially since Guyana has not been posting runs that its bowlers could  defend.