Cricket Guyana Inc. Executive Anand Sanasie yesterday confirmed that the inter-county tournaments are a thing of the past as the franchise will soon be launching their new National Cricket League which he promised will supersede that of the traditional fixtures.
The Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) secretary, during a brief interview with Stabroek Sports, said that the idea, which was in the making some two years now, will finally come to fruition and will feature eight teams from across the three counties; Demerara Essequibo and Berbice who will compete at the highest levels of cricket locally.
“We have found that inter-county is not a good enough format to have enough cricket for enough players to be exposed. The National league will have all three formats with eight teams who will participate.
“We divided the areas into eight geographic and a total of four guest players, from outside can play. The particulars are being finalized, the results of inter county is not beneficial because we need more cricket and the National Cricket League offers that,” was his explanation.
Sanasie indicated that the league is expected to bowl off sometime before the upcoming Regional four-day tournament or when the first few rounds culminate ahead of their break where players switch gears in order to prepare for the Nagico Regional Super 50.
He explained that works are ongoing to ensure that the league bowls off some 50 over matches to help the players better adjust for the Super 50 tournament.
Also, he said, the league will serve as a preparatory reservoir ahead of major tournaments such as CPL and the regional fixtures.
Addressing the Berbice Cricket Board (BCB) who in another newspaper article lashed out at the GCB for scrapping the inter-county tournaments, Sanasie said that Berbice has refused to take up any form of representation and while he does regret the situation, it is unlikely that the BCB will be notified of such endeavor because of their absence.
Sanasie promised that the league will be of the highest standards and will touch a wider range with regards to seeing most of the country’s top players being in action on a regular basis. He also confirmed that the duo of Vasbert Drakes, the High Performance Center Head Coach and Englishman Graeme West’s visit to Guyana was merely to design and set up specific programmes for the Under-19 quartet of Kemo Paul, Shimron Hetmyer, Tevin Imlach and Akshaya Persaud who will be participating in the U19 World Cup competition next year.
The four young men were named in the West Indies U19 team ahead of the ICCU19 World Cup slated for Bangladesh. Sanasie said that the programmes were to ensure the players and coaches around the region were on the same page and indicated that the CGI franchise will now undertake the task of ensuring the players are trained accordingly.
