The Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) yesterday officially launched the Digicel Summer Smash Twenty20 Cricket Tournament in the boardroom of the sponsors and the competition gets underway today with the first of the preliminary matches in the ‘Berbice Free Zone’.
This will extend until tomorrow with the matches being played at the Port Mourant Cricket Ground on both days while West Berbice ‘Free Talk’ will play two matches today going up against the Upper Corentyne ‘Free Weekend’ in the first match followed by a match against the New Amsterdam ‘Free Credit’ team.
And tomorrow the Upper Corentyne ‘Free Weekend’ will contest the New Amsterdam ‘Free Credit’ team.
At the launching were Digicel’s Public Relations and Events Manager, Shonnet Moore, GCB representatives including the President Chetram Singh, High Performance Analyst, Robin Singh and Marketing Officer, Ramsay Ali, as well as five of the players who will be participating in the tournament.
GCB disclosed that the tournament will follow an innovative format in terms of the advancing of teams and their players from one stage of the competition to another.
The GCB president and the high performance analyst gave details of the proposed layout of the tournament, noting that it is designed to determine the best possible national team of cricketers that will advance to represent Guyana at the upcoming Regional 20/20 which begins in July.
Chetram Singh stated that the GCB is using this competition to give the national selectors a chance to see all the players and select the best as the tournament proceeds.
The matches will be played in the regular 20/20 cricket format while incorporating a selection system based on the assessment of the players as they perform on the field, with the focus on the players and not the teams.
Teams that will be proceeding at each step of the competition will comprise members from the winning team and outstanding players who may be among the other teams.
“Our desire is to get the best players, the objective is to produce the best possible team for Guyana at the Regional 20/20,” Chetram Singh emphasized. “The players will get a chance to move forward despite their team’s loss.”
Best of the best
The new format is expected to enable the GCB to produce a team of the best while encouraging the players to perform at their optimum despite the points standing of their team in the knowledge that they still possess a chance to go forward.
According to Robin Singh, the gist of this plan is to “always keep the cream at the top” in order to draw together the best of the best so that Guyana can be well represented on the regional scene.
Meanwhile, the tournament begins with nine teams: three from Berbice, four from Demerara and two from Essequibo. It was originally planned to have three teams from each to kick off the preliminary matches but there was some difficulty with the Essequibo region.
However it was calculated that it would be wiser instead to send a Demerara team to Essequibo so as to evenly spread the teams.
The preliminary matches begin with round robin matches played among each county’s three teams and two teams from each county will emerge to compete in the ‘Super Sixes’ phase.
Four teams will then proceed to the semi-finals. The semis and the finals will be held at the National Stadium on July 9 and 10, respectively.
Ali disclosed that approximately $1M in prize money will be given away while Digicel will also be adding a little flavour for ticket holders by doling out attractive prizes to lucky spectators.
