Essequibo head coach, Ryan Hercules has expressed his disappointment with the poor performances by his side in the Hand-In-Hand Inter-County Under-19 three-day and 50 overs tournaments.
Essequibo failed to show any fight with just a few players putting their hands up as they completed a win-less run in the tournaments.
The 50-overs tournament saw Essequibo conceding a six-wicket defeat to Berbice when Inter-County cricket returned to the Albion Community Centre ground before embarrassing performances led them to 96-run and 41-run losses to Demerara and the Select Under-17 respectively.
Against the junior side, Essequibo moved from 59-1 to 96 all out while against Demerara they went from 49-2 to 100-9, eventually being bowled out for 127.
Rain did hamper the three-day tournament but in the shorter format, Essequibo’s batting collapsed every time after having decent starts while their bowling seemed to be akin to a toothless pit-bull, lacking bite.
“Essequibo had a disappointing, a bad tournament beginning with the three-day and got worse as we came in to the one days,” Hercules said.
“We were here for a little while and most of the players are not accustomed to playing so much cricket so they weren’t mentally focused on playing so long,” the coach said.
“I don’t think the players were properly prepared to play this tournament, they were just picked up, had a two-day camp and off to the tournament,” he added.
Nevertheless, Hercules said that he was impressed with some of the performances by a few players, Orlando Jailall, Amit Persaud and Lance Roberts.
Persaud, an off-spinner returned two five-wicket hauls in his three-day campaign and secured five wickets in the three, one-day matches. Mahesh Ramnarine also accounted for five wickets while Elian Whyte had three wickets in the limited overs competition.
Jailall looked better in the three-day format but struggled with scores of 1, 0 and 37 in the 50 overs while his opening partner, Kevin Christian scored 23, 18 and six.
Roberts scored the only half century for Essequibo in the 50 overs, an unbeaten 53 in addition to scores of four and 14 to go with his two wickets.
Hercules, who has won both 50-overs and three-day franchises with Essequibo, added that he is hopeful something could be done to assist the players.
“I do hope that we need something in place for them, we can’t just hope to turn up next year and win,” he said.
“Things in place like academy and training would do well for us.”
With six players from this current squad returning, Hercules said.. “if we continue to work with them we could come and do well, even to have them playing more cricket.”
