The Guyana Cricket Board’s (GCB) annual awards ceremony will tonight be without its featured speaker.
GCB president, Chetram Singh, yesterday told Stabroek Sport that Professor Hilary Beckles, who was scheduled to deliver the feature address was ill and would not be able to attend tonight’s ceremony.
The Barbados-born Beckles, who has attained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Economic History, has written extensively on Caribbean cricket and his absence from tonight’s proceedings would surely leave a void in the evening’s proceedings especially since the GCB has not stated whether a suitable replacement has been found.
Interest will therefore centre on who, in what has been a lukewarm year for the nation’s senior cricketers, will be the GCB’s choice for its Cricketer-of-the-Year.
The Guyana senior team finished fourth in the Carib Beer League Series and failed to reach the semi-finals of the Carib Beer Challenge Cup.
One cricketer does stand out, but Chanderpaul’s purple patch of scoring was done for the benefit of the West Indies and not Guyana and while he is sure to be rewarded it might not be with the Cricketer-of-the-Year award.
That award should also bypass the injured West Indies captain and last yea’s winner Ramnaresh Sarwan.
This has been a most unfortunate year for Sarwan.
He was forced to withdraw from the Guyana/ Barbados Carib Beer match with a chipped bone in the right thumb and has been dogged by injuries throughout the year missing some matches of the West Indies tour of England and finally the recent Inter-County competitions, not to mention the more important tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa with the regional West Indies senior team.
Among those in contention therefore should be Narsingh Deonarine, who had the best batting performance in the five Carib Beer matches with 251 runs at an average of 50.20.
He also had the best batting performance in the KFC Cup with 217 runs at an average of 43.40, performances which probably influenced his recall to the West Indies team for the tour of Zimbabwe for the One-Day Series.
Should Deonarine get the nod it would be a fitting reward for the gutsy young cricketer whose career earlier this year hung under a cloud after he had been accused of rape in England.
Another cricketer in the reckoning should be Travis Dowlin, whose performances in the latter half of the year especially leading Demerara has been nothing but outstanding with several centuries and a number of man-of-the-match awards. But Assad Fudadin with a double hundred against Essequibo could also come into the equation.
There has not been much to shout about by the bowlers but Veerasammy Permaul did have a reasonably satisfying debut regional tournament with the senior team.
The national U-19 team should be rewarded for winning the TLC U-19 competition under Stephen Jacobs and Singh said he expected the members of the West Indies U-19 team currently encamped in Guyana in preparation for next year’s Youth World Cup tournament to be present at tonight’s ceremony.
Royston Crandon, who scored a debut hundred (101) in the KFC Cup against the Windward Islands has also done well this year on the local scene with both bat and ball.
The three Guyanese Stephen Jacobs, Rajendra Chandrika and Veerasammy Permaul are in line for the junior Cricketer-of-the Year award which was year won last by Gajanand Singh.
