Academy players benefit from the Somerset Wyvern's generosity

The young cricketers who are part of the Academy at the County Ground in Taunton may have been away for a few days over the Christmas period, but during their time away will most certainly have kept in touch with coaches Mark Garaway and Kevin Shine.

Thanks to the generosity of the Somerset Wyverns each of the eleven young players now has the use of a hand held computer.

For sometime now the Wyverns have donated funds to the club to help with the development of young players, but this year their money has been used specifically to fund the Personal Data Assistants that each of the Academy members have been given to use.

Academy Director Mark Garaway told: "We are very grateful to the Somerset Wyverns for their generosity. Both Kevin Shine and myself have worked with these hand help computers for a while now and they do make a difference and they will most certainly help the young players."

He continued: "We can put all the information that we want the players to have into the computers and it's there for them as and when they need to use it, as well as us being able to keep in touch easily."

Somerset coach Kevin Shine told me: "These computers have an infra-red capability. Each session that we have with the players we can put the information onto their computers rather than just tell them and it's there for them to use."

The coach continued: "We can also monitor their progress and keep in regular touch so that we can all be clear about what we are doing."