Much has been raved about Guyana’s recent success during the Cricket West Indies (CWI) Professional Cricket League Regional Four-Day Tournament after the South Americans won the title for five consecutive years up until they were dethroned by Barbados in this year’s season shortened by two rounds because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Leon Johnson and his troops are deserving of all the praise, so too are coaches Eusan Crandon and Rayon Griffith who are among the architects of Guyana’s winning combinations.
But something is amiss. Guyana hasn’t found the right equilibrium for producing quality international cricketers amidst their regional success. The former in my mind is worthier of applause since there is no shortage of cricket aptitude in this part of the world.
But what aren’t we doing to churn out more superstars at the international level?
To take you back to the last 20 years, far beyond Crandon’s and Griffith’s reign, Guyana has only produced 18 Test players. Among the noteworthy performers are Ramnaresh Sarwan, who collected 87 caps with nearly 6000 test runs and a marvelous One Day Career and Devendra Bishoo who played 36 matches and is Guyana’s third most successful test bowler with 117 scalps. He is right up there as a top Guyanese performer at the highest level.
Narsingh Deonarine who played 18 matches and Shimron Hetmyer who is currently on 16 matches and is likely to play much more, are the only others to have worn the maroon cap more than a dozen times.
Only Bishoo and Hetmyer, during the last 10 years, have had seemly prolonged careers while Mahendra Nagamootoo, Sewnarine Chattergoon, Ryan Ramdass, Leon Johnson, Assad Fudadin, Rajindra Chandrika and Deonarine were all unsuccessful in nailing down permanent places in the West Indies set up. The fall of Ronsford Beaton who played a few ODIs was another telling blow.
Surely that is an issue for cricket administrators and coaches. To get the perspective of what seems to be the issues, Stabroek Sports sough the viewpoint from Steven Jacobs, one of the players who was touted to go on but like so many of his peers, failed to do so or had brief international careers.
“This is my assessment because I would sit and think about it a lot, the structure of club cricket in Guyana is not that strong and it’s an issue and also some of these players have to take some of the blame but the structure of club cricket needs to change,” Jacobs lamented.
He underscored his point by juxtaposing the local reality against other successful Caribbean cricketing structures.
“I’ve played in Barbados and Trinidad and their structures when it comes to club cricket is at a professional level, hence they have the opportunity to churn out players who can solely focus on cricket and make efforts to improve.”
Jacobs also suggested that a lot of young players need to be given the opportunity to play with freedom during their initial stint at the first-class level and not to be burdened with the pressure of being dropped if success isn’t imminent.
Whatever the issues are, the powers that be, need to address what seems to be a growing pattern where our local players are unable to transfer local and domestic success onto the international scene. Part of the solution may indeed require the restructuring of club cricket by somehow pumping more revenue into it for local players. That will also serve to attract top-flight players from other parts of the region to induce a more competitve cricketing environment.
The mental physiology of players to manage and cope with pressure and stress seems to be another inability of recent for Guyanese players. Clearly talent isn’t an issue.
