El Dorado Inter-County 50-over tourney bowls off Friday

Sep 14, 2011 Sports

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Final to be played at Albion

 

By Sean Devers

 

The senior Regional 50-over cricket competition is fixed for Guyana next month and the local selectors have limited time to pick the best possible Guyana team especially since West Indies players Devendra Bishoo, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan along with the HPC trio of Veerasammy Permaul, Rajendra Chandrika and Brandon Bess will be unavailable for various reasons.
Bess, Permaul and Chandrika will be unavailable since they will be representing the HPC in the competition which runs from October 19-31.
Sarwan should be in the Wet Indies team for their tour of Bangladesh next month for two Tests and three ODIs.
It’s understood that since the WICB is no longer looking at Chanderpaul for ODI cricket, the veteran left-hander will ‘rest out’ the Regional One-Day tournament after his highly successful English County championship performance to facilitate a younger player being given the opportunity of representing Guyana. Chanderpaul is expected to join the West Indies team for the Test matches in Bangladesh.

With the unavailability of the West Indies players, there are several places up for grabs on the Guyana team and the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) revealed at a press conference at the GCB Secretariat yesterday that the Inter-County 50-overs competition will be used to identify players for National selection.
According to the GCB several non- cricketing reasons caused a delay in the staging of the Inter-County tournament which will bowl off on Friday with two matches.
Like in recent times a Rest team, (re-named the President’s X1) made up of players ignored by their counties will compete along with the three County teams, Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo.
On Friday, Essequibo battle Demerara at Bourda while Berbice host the President’s X1 at Blairmont in West Bank Berbice before the second round is played on Tuesday with two more matches when Demerara face Berbice at Bourda and the Rest Team oppose Essequibo at Everest.
The final round of the round-robin competition is scheduled for Tuesday when Essequibo face-off with Berbice at DCC and the President’s X1 come up against Demerara at Everest.
The Final is set for Albion on Sunday September 25.
While the senior players will miss the El Dorado competition it will allow more players to be seen by the selectors for possible National selection.
The inter-county 50-overs tournament has been sponsored under the El Dorado brand since Berbice and Demerara contested the 2001 final at Albion and DDL has been associated with the Inter-County one-day tournament since the 1989 El Dorado Bounded Reserve Final at Rose Hall Canje.
During the 1990s, DDL sponsored the inter-County tournament under their Soca soft drink brand up to 1997 when Demerara beat Berbice in the Final at Uitvlugt before Banks DIH sponsored the competition briefly towards the end of the 1990’s under the Banks Malta brand. DDL was back in 2001 and has been the competition’s sponsor ever since.
DDL’s Bands Manager and National Hockey player Maria Munroe said DDL was pleased to be partnering with the GCB as hosts this year and reaffirmed her Company’s commitment to supporting the developing of local sport and cricket in particular.
“This is a very important competition since it is being used to select our National senior cricket team for regional competition,” Munroe, who last month returned from the Hockey World Cup Qualifiers in Brazil where Guyana placed second to qualify for the next stage.
GBC President Ramsay Ali informed that $300,000 has been pumped into the competition and explained that Albion is being used for the final on a request from the sponsors since it is felt that playing the final there will more capture the interest of the fans than if it was played in Demerara.
Ali added that once the finalists are known on Tuesday afternoon an intensive promotion campaign will be launched for the final with the focus being on Berbicians through radio, Berbice TV and cars conveying the message through loud speakers driving through the Region Six Community.
A President’s XI, picked by Chairman of the National senior selection panel (Rayon Griffith and his colleges Ravindra Seeram and Adrian Amsterdam) along with a representative from Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, will participate in the Competition. The President’s X1 joins county teams Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice in the battle for supremacy.
“This will enable the selectors to have a look at players outside of the squads selected by the county selectors and a special effort was made to have a strong President’s X1 team which will not only participate but compete strongly for the title and provide proper opposition for the other teams as we look at players to be selected for Guyana,” GCB Vice-President former Guyana youth batsman, Alfred Mentore said.
Former Test batsmen Travis Dowlin and Sewnarine Chattergoon along with present National all-rounder Steven Jacobs are in the President’s X1 and a keen contest is expected in the four-team competition.

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