West Indies: Two 15-year-olds eyeing big times

Two 15-year-old schoolboys will be packing their cricket bags, not book bags, with the hope or being selected for Barbados' senior cricket team in the 2001 regional Busta Cup first-class competition. Foundation School's fast-bowling all-rounder, Jamal Forde, and Deighton Griffith's left-handed opening batsman, Martin Nurse started doing that last week after their surprise selection to national trials.

'I've never made a Barbados team before so I would really like to make this one,' Nurse said.

'I feel really good about being invited because this is the first time I am going to senior trials,' he added.

Nurse came to the fore when he scored a century against heavyweights Spartan at Queen's Park in his debut Division 1 match.

'It was really great becauase that was my first century, plus it was in the First Division, the highest cricket level I've ever played in my life,' Nurse recalled.

However, the Highland, St. Philip resident, said he was still trying to cope with the transition from playing in the Goddards Schools Division to the island's premier division. 'It's pretty difficult but since I've adapted to it, I'm finding it really easy now to fit in with the rest of the fellas,' he said.

Forde has already worn national colours in two disciplines at the junior level and he believed it was not too far-fetched to gain a senior cricket cap.

For the past two years he played for the national Under-15 team while at Easter, he represented Barbados at the CARIFTA Games where he gained a silver medal in the javelin.

The strongly-built Forde went on to better this feat by capturing a gold medal and establishing a new record of 61.85 metres in the javelin at the Junior Central American and Caribbean Athletics Championships in Puerto Rico.

The Crane Gardens, St. Philip resident said he had put in place a schedule to cope with the two sports.

'It is a season for everything. The first term would be cricket and then l would try to concentrate on athletics in the second; plus the third term, I would concentrate on both,' Forde noted. But for now, it is cricket which is engaging his attention.

'It is a great honour. I wasn't expecting to be called to trials because at first when the season started out, I wasn't bowling well but as the season progressed, I started taking wickets,' he said.

He has also benefited from advice from his uncle, Emmerson Jordan, who represented Barbados as a fast bowler in the late 1980s and still plays for local club Maple, with Forde's cousins, Kregg Burgess and Barrington Yearwood Jnr., the outstanding Alexandra Under-15 cricketer.