By Marlon Munroe
Coach of the national under-19 26-man training squad, Hubern Evans says that his focus is on fine tuning the level of skills since there is evidence that the players have been working out during the current rainy season.
He told Stabroek Sport that the majority of the players’ fitness is at a high level and therefore he will be focusing on technical deficiencies of the batsmen and bowlers. Further, he emphasised that the initial three-day encampment, which ended on Sunday at the Chetram Singh Centre of Excellence at La Bonne Intention (LBI), will also give the management team a better opportunity of what the main focus will be when the squad begins its three-week programme before the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) tournament in late July.
“We have just the fine tuning, just looking at their technique; the way they operate against the spinners and the fast bowlers while at the same time looking at the bowlers to see how best we can get them to do the right thing,” Evans stated.
On the other hand, Evans said that the players were urged to be patient, especially since the former batsman believes that cricket is a game where you have to practice immense patience. He pointed out that while this was being emphasized to the batsmen, especially when it comes to their shot selection, the bowlers were not spared this particular lesson.
“Cricket is a patient game and most of the times many batsmen, and even the bowlers, do not show patience and sometimes when they are batting and not getting runs they rush things rather than wait to get runs and there is where they get into trouble or out,” Evans said.
He also noted that there were video analysis and this will also be done when the three-week camp starts on June 14. Further, he pointed out that the use of the synthetic surface will enable local players to cope with the conditions outside of Guyana.
He believes that the quickness at the LBI facility will benefit bowlers as well as batsmen. He said this is a conditioning of the mind for the players especially since it was noticed when local batsmen leave these shores they struggled on the fractionally faster pitches outside of Guyana.
“Normally when we are on tour they (other countries) play a lot of quicks (fast bowlers) and bowl a lot of short balls and so now we are getting them accustomed to that,” Evans stated.
When Stabroek Sport visited the training facility on Saturday afternoon players expressed their satisfaction with the work that was done at the weekend encampment. The pace bowlers who included West Indies under-19 player Keon ‘Buffy’ Joseph, who is also considered one of the fastest youngsters in the region, bowled with venom and Evans was satisfied with that.
