With several ladies unable to turn up for the second Demerara trial match, coach Ryan Hercules took the opportunity to push in an intense training session yesterday at La Bonne Intention, East Coast Demerara.
Stabroek Sport spoke to the Cricket West Indies (CWI) Level Two coach who explained that the day could not be wasted in light of the amount of preparation needed for the Guyana Cricket Board senior female Inter-County tournament.
“Because of the lack of players turning up today, we had a short number of players turning up yesterday and that decreased today we decided to focus more on some batting, bowling and fielding, just some basic techniques and stuff,” he said.
Hercules compared the 2019 season to now stating, “The lack of players is a big problem for us. Last year [2019] we had about 50-60 players coming to practice and this year we’ve gone down to about 14 now with players coming out for different reasons like injuries and so but we are still trying.”
With a lengthy time away from the game due to the Novel Coronavirus pandemic, Hercules said the players were now returning
“Everybody is now coming back into it. We all mentioned before the game we would have some niggles here and there but it’s just getting back into it, even myself is a bit rusty, but we got to go step-by-step and hopefully, get some more practice in before the Inter-County because at this point we are not really up to par with where we want to be because of the time away from cricket.”
This publication understands that Demerara will have at least two more sessions this week.
Hercules stressed on the tough task at hand if they are going to dethrone reigning champions, Berbice.
He said, “We need to just go out there and put our best foot forward. We have two senior players in the West Indies set up in Kasyia Schultz and Cherry-Ann Fraser and we will be depending on them to carry the team along with some of the senior players. I think it is going to be challenging but once we get some work in we can get some results in our way.”
