To say that the majority of cricket loving fans have been disappointed with the performance of the national senior team would be nothing but an understatement.
Two crushing losses to teams that we had prided ourselves as being on equal footing with, has done a lot to lower our confidence in the team.
But we are not writing off our boys just yet. No! With skipper Ramnaresh Sarwan leading from the front and batting his way into the form which made him at one time the number one ranked One-Day batsman in the world, there is hope.
Prior to the start of the Carib Beer Series, president of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Chetram Singh pointed out that the team was a young one but added that none-the-less, he expected a lot from them.
Singh, we are sure, would have been disappointed with the team’s overall performance. Apart from Sewnarine Chattergoon and Sarwan no other batsman has managed to score a century and there have been no stand-out in the bowling department either.
While we would not quibble too much over the decision of the selectors to leave out experienced players, the selectors must also realize that there is a method to blooding young players and that experienced players who can still play a role in improving the team’s performance must still be selected.
If the selectors need examples they need to look no further than Brian Lara, who, with a century and a half-century in the match, was the main reason why Trinidad defeated Guyana outright in their first round clash.
Then there was the Travis Dowlin experiment. One would suppose that Dowlin agreed to open the batting, and that had the experiment worked the selectors would have felt justified in making the decision. But it did not work and not only was a genuine opening batsman left back, Dowlin failed to come off in the position which must surely affect his confidence, especially since he was the form batsman going into the tournament.
One would have thought that some of the Guyana batsmen would have buckled down to the task of attracting the attention of the West Indies selectors given the fact that there might be a few spots up for grabs when Sri Lanka tours the Caribbean later this year.
But the young guns have not done anything noteworthy. At this level only big hundreds will get you there.
And for the bowlers, they need to try and prevent all and sundry from racking up huge scores against them.
What is particularly galling is that tail-enders are consistently making half centuries against this attack and were recording career-best batting performances.
In the case of Ryan Hinds, his century in the second round match was his fifth against Guyana.
Come on Guyana, you need to show more fight.
One wonders at this time about the role of the manager and the coach in all of this.
Is there a problem in the camp? What really is the cause of the team doing so poorly?
The team will get no respite when they come up against a Jamaican team which already has two outright wins from Friday in Jamaica and after that it’s on to the Stanford Twenty20 competition.
The team will see the addition of a few more seasoned players for the Stanford Twenty20 competition, but with the recent performance of the Guyana team they definitely will not start as favourites even though they are the defending champions and will definitely not retain their Stanford Twenty20 crown.
That is, not unless they show some fight.
