President of the Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA), Roger Harper has described 2019 as ‘decent’ despite the weather and availability of grounds hindering the plans of the body.
“2019 has been a very decent year for GCA. While it was good, the weather played a great part in limiting what we were able to do,” Harper told Stabroek Sport, adding, “We had a lot of cricket played taking into consideration what we had to deal with.”
The former West Indies off-spinner
Said the association suffered greatly during the middle of the year.
“While the early part of the year, January, we had good weather which we don’t usually have and we were able to start our competitions on time, we suffered greatly in the middle of the year. Our Easter programme was cut short, we were unable to finish our under-15 competition as we would have liked and the rains came again at the end of the year.”
He continued: “We managed to get the youth programmes going; we had our under-15 and we had our under-19 competitions with a team from the United States taking part; which has happened over the last three years.
“Our second-division competitions including the New Building Society 40-over competition which is one of the features in that division and the Noble House Seafood two-day competition and I think the players look forward to them.”
The GCA head said that he was satisfied with the influx of young players at both second and first-division levels but was dissatisfied with the availability of venues to host the most premier tournaments.
“We have a bunch of young players involved in it but the two-day gives them more time to learn the rudiments of the game and our first-division competitions, the GISE/Star Party Rental Trophy Stall two-day tournament has progressed slowly with one of the main hindrances being the availability of first-division grounds,” he stated. In addition to the on-field work, Harper reflected on the successful hosting of a number of programmes which ranged from coaches visiting clubs to aid in their sessions to a fast bowling programme with the assistance of the physiotherapist, Neil Barry Jr.
“We also ran a few developmental programmes, we did our usual outreach programmes where we had coaches going around to clubs to impart knowledge and give some guidance to structure their practice sessions to be more effective and beneficial to their players and make the most use of their time, as well as tips to remedy certain technical issues that may arise. We also ran a workshop for coaches and a fast bowling programme with the aid of one of the top physiotherapist in the country, Neil Barry Jr., for the development in terms of strength and conditioning as well as technical work,” Harper stated.
However, notwithstanding the accomplishments of the year, Harper believed this year fell short of the bar set by the association in 2018.
“Well I think 2018 we had a really excellent year in terms of the amount of cricket played. We had a lot more youth competitions Under-13, Under-15, Under-17 and Under-19 as well as second and first-division competitions which went very well but I think primarily because of the weather we were able to get through most of our competitive programmes and I would say we had a better year in 2018 but not withstanding that, I still think we had a very decent 2019,” he said.
The 2019 season saw Guyana Cricket Board’s Club of the Year, Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) winning the New Building Society second-division 40-over tournament with Everest finishing second.
GCC finished second in the Under-19 Noble House Seafoods 100 overs tournament to Demerara Cricket Club (DCC) while the New York Tri-State team won the 50-over New York Tri-State under-19 tournament with DCC ending as runners-up.
GCC won the Toucan Distributions Under-15 competition with DCC finishing second.
In the first-division two-day tournament, GCC leads Zone A with DCC second with one match to play while in Zone B, Everest leads with Malteenoes Sports Club and Police second with one and two matches respectively left. Over in the second division two-day competition, 17 matches remain with GCC and DCC leading their respective zones. These two sides again lead the NBS 40-over competition zones.
