Bridgetown, Barbados – Successful Combermere cricket master Roddy Estwick has one unfulfilled ambition.
Estwick told SUNSPORT in a wide-ranging interview thar he would love to coach the senior Barbados cricket team.
“I have been at Combermere for 15 wonderful years from 1999 and I am very happy but I would still lament that I would love to help Barbados cricket and I have not been given the opportunity and that’s been very disappointing for me,” he said.
“Of course, I have that burning desire. I always want to help Barbados cricket whether as a coach or a mentor but I can’t select myself.”
Estwick said he was hoping to be afforded the chance more than ten years ago.
“I’ve been coach of the West Indies Under-19 side for the last four World Cups. I am still on the outside looking in. It is an amazing phenomenon for someone who has done as well as I have and not been given the opportunity to coach the Barbados senior team.”
With the Barbados job remaining elusive for him, Estwick said he is considering applying for the position of the West Indies’ head coach which was previously held by another former Barbados fast bowler Ottis Gibson, who suddenly parted company with the West Indies Cricket Board earlier this year before the home against Bangladesh or New Zealand.
“Of course it has crossed his mind,” he said. Two of the guys that are currently with the West Indies senior team worked with me.
“I won’t say under me because I don’t believe in under. I believe that you are coaches and you find specialised roles for them. And I can’t see myself being any different at all.
“I think it is a lot of luck. People on the outside looking in don’t understand. I would get up in the morning. We set up a breakfast programme this year and I think that has helped us tremendously with the help of our sponsors, Nicholls Baking.
“The boys are fed every morning. I leave my home at whatever hour and go to Combermere and make sure these boys have a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages whatever, and they are ready to play.
“They realise that someone cares about them and when young people believe that someone cares about them, they will be be prepared to run through wall for you.
“People just coach but I try to make sure the boys are happy and once you have a happy cricketer, you get a successful cricketer,” reasoned Estwick.
“I would have loved a go in 2002 and 2003 when I was coaching the West Indies B side in the first-class set-up, I thought I had a decent chance of going on to the senior level but the powers that be decided that maybe Roddy Estwick is a little bit too controversial, so we would go with a placid guy who would toe the line,” he said.
Since taking up the position as Combermere’s coach in 1999, Estwick, a former Barbados and West Indies B team fast bowler, has guided the Waterford schoolboys to an amazing 36 titles in 15 years.
The last was the team’s capture of the Barbados Cricket Association’s (BCA) Intermediate title for the first time. (Barbados Nation)
