Despite T20 success, Guyana’s senior teams failed to deliver in 2010

Dec 23, 2010 Sports

Guyana celebrate their T20 win

By Sean Devers

Despite their Caribbean T20 success in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana’s senior male cricket team failed to deliver in 2010 and finished at the bottom of the points table in 3 of the four tournaments they participated in while their female counterparts finished 5th in the Women’s regional 50-over tournament in St Vincent.
As the Guyanese prepare to defend their Caribbean T20 title in Antigua and Barbados next month, they will reflect on a miserable campaign on the road this year and hope that the experience of facing high-level opposition in strange and testing conditions in South Africa would have given them valuable experience as they aspire to retain their Regional T20 title and make it once again to this year’s Champions League tournament.
Power struggles within the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) executive, seemingly uncommitted cricket from some of the senior players in a team lacking a highly qualified and pro-active Coach and the glaring discomfort on pitches with bounce shown by batsmen accustomed to pulverizing bowling attacks on ‘graveyard’ dead pitches in Guyana combined to contribute to Guyana’s woeful 2010 showing at the senior level.
With the GCB preparing for its elections, it is hoped that enough time, interest, effort and funding is spent on ensuring that Guyana, once the powerhouse of West Indies cricket, raises its game in 2011.
The new GCB executive will also need to place much more emphasis on the female version of the game in Guyana since even without proper preparation, very little local competitions and no financial remuneration 4 Guyanese are in the 14-member West Indies female team which tours India next month.
Today Kaieteur Sport looks at the Guyana senior team’s performances this year in part 1 of its review of Guyana’s cricket in 2010.
Regional 4-day First Class (Jan 8-Feb 29)
No team finished with fewer points than Guyana, who shared the cellar position with the Windwards. Jamaica beat T&T in the final round to finish with 60 points, three ahead of 2nd placed Barbados. Despite their 5-wicket win and 12 points against the Leewards in Trinidad, Guyana ended on 22 points from 6 matches.
Shiv Chanderpaul scored 237 runs from 2 matches while Ramnaresh Sarwan made 116 in his only innings and Narsingh Deonarine scored 184 runs from 2 matches. They were the only Guyanese to register centuries in the competition.
Guyana’s batting performance was disappointing with only Gajanand Singh (213 runs from 3 matches Ave 42.60) averaging higher than 35 apart from Sarwan, Chanderpaul and Deonarine.
Leg spinner Davendra Bishoo (24) including 2 five-wicket hauls, was Guyana’s leading wicket taker but only left-arm spinner Veerasammy Permaul (17) and medium pacer Esuan Crandon (15) of the other bowlers managed to take 15 or more wickets
Caribbean T20
(July 22-31)
After beating defending champions T&T by 4 runs in the semi-finals in Port-of-Spain, Guyana, on the back of a heroic unbeaten 42 from 17 balls with 4 fours and 3 sixes from 19-year-old Jonathon Foo squeezed past Barbados by one wicket off the penultimate ball in a pulsating final to claim their 2nd ever Regional T20 title and qualify to represent the West Indies in the Airtel Champions League T20 tournament in South Africa.
Foo (Average 103 from 4 matches) topped the overall batting averages while Travis Dowlin, the Man-of-the-Match when Guyana beat T&T in the Stanford Final in 2006 in Antigua, was Guyana’s leading run-scorer with 128 runs including 2 fifties from 4 matches.
Only Guyana’s Lennox Cush (11 wickets from 4 matches including a hat-trick in Barbados) finished with more than Bishoo’s 10 wickets (economy rate of 5.12) as the Albion leg-spinner captured the Man-of-the-Series award. Jamaican left-arm pacer Krishmar Santokie and Bajan spinner Ashley Nurse also finished with 10 wickets each.
Despite not winning a Regional First-Class title since 2001 and a Regional 50-over championship since 2005, Guyana, who lost to Jamaica in the 2008 Stanford semi-final in Antigua on Mashramani night of that year, continued their Caribbean dominance of the shortest form of the game by winning 2 of the three Regional champions that have been played so far. Like in 2006 when Guyana won in Antigua, Chanderpaul was unavailable as he opted to play for his English county team instead of Guyana.
Airtel T20 Champions League (Sept 10-26)
After winning the Caribbean T20, expectations were high as Guyana began preparations for their South Africa trip.
Despite player-contract problems, the non-availability of a full strength Barbados team for proposed practice matches in Barbados and the non-selection of Chanderpaul who preferred his English team ahead of his country for the Caribbean T20 tournament, Richard Ramdeen was added to the 14-man Caribbean T20 squad and preparation began.
Two practice matches against T&T at providence provided plenty of hype and the Guyana Government came on board as the team’s official sponsor. The squad was accommodated at reduced rates at the Princess Hotel for their encampment and there was plenty of financial and moral support from both at home and abroad
Not since Guyana won the Stanford T20 title in 2006 was the interest for cricket and support for a Guyana team been as tremendous as it was this year. After a defeat and a victory against T&T in the practice match, the Guyanese were off to South Africa with both the Sports and Tourism Minister attending their official departure from the Princess Hotel.
With Kaieteur News being the only Caribbean media house covering their performance Guyana began their campaign against the Royal Challengers Bangalore and an overawed Guyanese team received a trashing.
The cold climate, high altitude, thin air and bouncy pitches caused the South Americans plenty of discomfort as they lost all four of their games although some improvement was shown as the competition progressed.
The inability of Travis Dowlin and Sewnarine Chattergoon to get the ball off the square in the first 5 overs, the lack of meaningful contributions from Foo and several tactical errors from Coach Ravindra Seeram condemned Guyana to an embarrassing tournament although Bishoo impressed and captured Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket against the Mumbai Indians in Durban.
With the score on 99-3 after 15 overs in that game, Guyana were in control. However, Kieron Pollard launched a merciless attack on the shell-shocked bowlers in his pugnacious unbeaten 72 from 30 balls despite Bishoo’s 3-34 from 4 overs. Sarwan’s 46 was not enough as Guyana reached 153-6 off 20 overs in reply.
Back in Johannesburg, Guyana were mauled by the Lions by 9 wickets before going down to going down to South Africa in their final game despite a magnificent 46-ball 70 from Sarwan. Ramdeen, finally given a debut after the repeated failures of the openers, made a cameo 35 from 22 balls while Steven Jacobs, in his 2nd match, was again in the 30s with positive batting.
With 4 GCB executives including Chetram Singh on tour with the team, a lot should have been learned from the South Africa experience but although both Dowlin and Chattergoon were sacked for the Regional 50-over tournament when they returned home, the Coach, who replaced Albert Smith in the middle of the 2009 season with little success, was retained and Guyana produced another embarrassing performance in the 50-over competition in Jamaica a month later.
Regional One-Day (Oct 14-24)

2010 National female team

Although strengthened with the availability of Chanderpaul and with ODI players Sarwan, Deonarine and Royston Crandon in the team, Guyana endured their worst ever Regional One-Day tournament since winning their first title in 1980 and lost 2 of their 3 games after just scraping past the Students of the West Indies High Performance Centre (HPC) off the final ball in the first round.
This year was only the 2nd time in over a decade that Guyana had failed to qualify for a Regional One-Day semi-final and their 100 all out off 21.5 overs against Barbados was their lowest total ever in the competition since they lost to Barbados by 9 runs in their inaugural match at this level in Barbados in 1973.
Guyana also lost their final game against the Leewards when, with rain approaching and the required run-rate going up, Chanderpaul, who made 14 not out from 33 balls with a strike rate of 42.42, made very little effort to accelerate although Royston Crandon, who finished unbeaten on 42 was trying his best to ‘up the tempo’ to get Guyana into the semis.
Sarwan was the only Guyanese to pass 60 runs while Bishoo’s 10 wickets was the 2nd most in the entire tournament behind Barbados Captain Ryan Hinds who had 14 from 2 more matches than Bishoo.
Ramdeen who made 46 on debut could only manage 14 runs from his next 2 innings as Guyana, who omitted Dowlin and Chattergoon after their South African struggles at the top of the order, again failed to build solid foundations.
The unavailability of opener Rajendra Chandrika and Permaul and the absence of a settled opening pair also hurt the Guyanese cause as did the mediocre wicketkeeping of debutant Anthony Bramble who, as he has done at the undr-19 level, showed plenty of promise with the bat. Bramble (Ave. 41) and Royston Crandon (Ave. 44) were the only Guyanese to average over 22. Sarwan, who scored Guyana’s only half-century in the competition, was third in the Guyana averages with 21.33.
Regional Women’s senior 50-over League (August)
Despite a wonderful unbeaten 100 against St Lucia from 17-year-old West Indies Female team all-rounder Shemaine Campbelle, Guyana finished 5th in the Senior Regional 50-over competition in St Vincent after beating St Lucia in the 5th place play-off.
Campbell, an elegant batter, leg-spinner and Wicket Keeper from Rose Hall Town Youth and Sports Club, captured the Player of the Series award after making 166 runs at an average of 83 and taking eight wickets at an average of 10.75 per wicket in four matches.
T&T played unbeaten to retain the title they had won the previous year in Guyana but Police fast bowler Subrina Munroe was one of two new comers and one of three Guyanese selected in the West Indies team for the International Cricket Council’s Women’s Challenge in Potchefstroom, South Africa in October. Munroe joined the Berbice pair of Campbelle and Tremaine Smartt as the Guyana in the regional team.
In November Opening batter and wicketkeeper June Ogle-Thomas became the 4th Guyanese in the West Indies touring party which will tour India to play five One Day Internationals and three T20 Internationals between January 10 and 24 against the Indian Women.
The squad features most of the players who performed brilliantly at the recent ICC Women’s Challenge in South Africa – where they won the T20 trophy and placed second in the 50 Over Tournament. The one newcomer in the 14-member squad is Ogle-Thomas who was selected based on her performances in the Regional Women’s 50-over League in St Vincent.