Keeping Nortel stars bright (8 August 1999)

8 August 1999

Keeping Nortel stars bright

Tony Cozier

Success, it is said, breeds success and that of the senior Barbados team in last season's Busta Cup clearly rubbed off on the juniors in their triumphant Nortel campaign that ended at Kensington Oval yesterday.

Captain Ryan Hinds, the hub around whom his players revolved, was in the team that won the Busta Cup and some of those under him were purposely and constantly involved in practice sessions and dressing room discussions.

They experienced, at first hand, the joy of victory and appreciated what it took to achieve it.

Teams do not win six matches out of seven, as was the case in the Busta Cup, or three out of five, as in Nortel, without being led once on first innings, without proper planning and the discipline and commitment of everyone involved.

And, at the junior level, they are legion, from the several managers and coaches who give of their time freely and willingly to the teachers and parents who offer vital encouragement.

Cricket talent

When all is said and done, however, it is those on the field who have to make the best of their cricket talent and upbringing, an obvious point that the support staff of any sport readily concedes.

And Barbados' boys did it.

Hinds was their star, as he ought to be. This was his third tournament, he was on the West Indies team to the last youth World Cup, he went to the Commonwealth Games with the Barbados team and he is a first-class cricketer who already has six Australian wickets and a couple of half-centuries under his belt.

But he was not as critical to his team's well-being as the key players in some of the other teams. Barbados' strength, as manager Darnley Boxill observed, was its all-round depth.

Everyone played an important part at some time or another. It was a genuine team effort, such as makes Australia and South Africa strong now and did the West Indies under Worrell and Lloyd.

The revelation that no fewer than 11 players of the champion Barbados team will be eligible for next year is encouraging indeed.

The same holds true for some of the other teams as well.

Narsingh Deonarine, the little run-glutton from Guyana, apparently has two more. Heaven help the poor bowlers.

So congratulations to all those who helped shape this team and these players. But it is the next phase that is the most challenging, both to the players and to those whose job it is to see that such teenage promise is not wasted.

Many who flourish at youth level find they cannot readily cope once the strong support system is removed.

Without the annual tournaments and the special coaching programmes, several have fallen by the wayside.

Interest wanes

Unable to immediately make it into their senior territorial teams, their interest and enthusiasm wane. They content themselves with club cricket - or turn their attention to other things.

Guyana, for instance, won the Nortel championship six successive times in the 1990s but have not been able to convert such dominance at regional first-class level.

Perhaps the most striking example of young cricket talent heading in other directions was the invincible Barbados youth teams of 1983 and 1984.

They won all of their matches outright - in 1983 two by an innings and one by 307 runs - and yet only seven of their number went on to play in the Barbados senior team and only one, Roland Holder, for a prolonged period that includes 11 Tests.

The others were Dave Cumberbatch, the captain, Ricky Ellcock, who also played for Middlesex, the late Tyrone Greenidge, Joe Harris, who also played for Canada, Michael Inniss and Milton Small, also two Tests.

There are other Barbadian cases of more recent vintage, notably the captains of two West Indies Under-19 teams, Ian Bradshaw and Shirley Clarke.

Hopefully, there won't be such haemorrhaging with this promising lot but it is worth the attention of the administrators to see that more is done to maintain the attention of those in the state of flux between under-19 fame and promotion into the first-class game.

Mark Alleyne was never in the Barbados Under-19 team but he did captain Harrison College to what was then the Under-15 Ronald Tree Cup - the predecessor of the BET Trophy - in 1984.

He has gone on to greater things since and none greater than batting for his county, Gloucestershire, in the Benson & Hedges Trophy at Lord's last Sunday.

His 112 off 91 balls, the main reason for victory by 124 runs over Yorkshire, was described by Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times as "fit to rank with some of the best played down the years in any Lord's finals".

That, of course, would include Clive Lloyd's 102 in the first World Cup final and Viv Richards' 136 in the second, high praise indeed.

Born in England of Barbadian parents, 'Bear', as he was known at college, left for London at age 16 where he continued to develop at Haringey Cricket College under the tutelage of Reg Scarlett, now the West Indies Cricket Board's director of coaching.

He was subsequently signed on by Gloucestershire, was the youngest player to score a century for the county at age 18, was captain last season when he was picked for England for the One-Day World Series tournament in Australia.

He broke off his tour to return to Barbados in tragic circumstances to attend the funeral of his father, Euclid, in a car crash. Always a great supporter, his old man would have delighted in his Lord's knock. So should all Barbadians.

And there was another Barbadian connection in the Gloucestershire team. Opener Tim Hancock, who made 35, is the grandson of Richie Packer, once a swashbuckling hitter for Wanderers.

Source :: The Barbados Nation