Recently re-elected President of the Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA) Roger Harper says the association simply plans to build on what they accomplished in 2011, for the new cricket calendar year. Harper was last week Tuesday night re-elected unopposed for a third consecutive two-year term to govern the affairs of the GCA when the institution had its Annual General Meeting and election of office bearers at the Guyana National Industrial Corporation (GNIC) Sports Club in Woolford Avenue.
“The GCA’s first task will be to build on the work done last year with a continued emphasis on youth development,” Harper told this newspaper yesterday.
“So the competitions we staged last year such as the De Sinco Under-13, Brainstreet Under-15, Queensway Cup first division along with various camps during the summer will be high on the agenda,” he explained. Harper, who played 25 tests and 105 one-day internationals for the West Indies from 1983-1996, was asked what is likely to be the first competition executed by the GCA for 2012.
“Due to the weather and unavailability of grounds at the back end of last year, the Noble House Seafood and Carib Heroes first and second division club competitions were not completed. As you know those weather patterns have continued and ground situation is the same, so as soon as that clears up, the first order for 2012 would be to complete those competitions for sure”, said Harper who coached the West Indies senior team from 2000-2003 in a period in which the regional side most famously triumphed 2-1 in the 2002 home series against a talented Indian side. Finally when asked if he suspects or foresees the current squabble between the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) and the Interim Management Committee (IMC) having any possible implications of the GCA or other such similar entities, Harper who was selected as the chief selector by the IMC recently and is part of one faction of the disputing Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) – stated he simply hopes at the end of it all a new constitution that has been spoken about before will be formed to ease the problems.
“We would like to see Guyana have a situation where such an impasse would not occur – but sadly this is the case. A singular new constitution for the governance of Guyana cricket as the IMC stated is one of their main tasks, needs to be established that streamlines activities of the GCB right down to the club associations, that would cater for all eventualities that could occur in the future,” Harper articulated.
The GCA, which many have credited with being the best organized association in Demerara, also re-elected all except one of its executives during Tuesday AGM.
The rest of the GCA executive are Neil Barry Sr., Azad Ibrahim, Deborah McNichol, Colin Alfred, Ron Daniels and Shaun Massiah as first and second vice president, secretary, public relations officer, assistant secretary and competitions committee chairman respectively.
