Nedd doing a fantastic job in developing young talent

Aug 11, 2015 Sports

Gavin Nedd (2nd right) and Travis Dowlin (3rd right) with the participants yesterday at DCC.

Gavin Nedd Academy launched yesterday

By Sean Devers

Former National off-spinner, 43-year-old Gavin Nedd took 29 wickets from 14 First-Class matches between 1994-1999, but his involvement with cricket has not stopped and yesterday the national under-17 Coach launched the ‘Gavin Nedd cricket Academy’ at the Demerara Cricket Club in Queenstown, Georgetown.
The two-week Academy caters for over 60 children from 4 to 17 years and former West Indies batsman 38-year-old Travis Dowlin who played six Tests, 11 ODIs and 85 First-Class matches, is assisting the hard working Nedd in running the Academy. Nedd’s 14-year-old son, Ashmead, a national under-14 & 17 left-arm spinner is also working with the younger participants.
The Academy runs from 09:00hrs to 13:00hrs each weekday and yesterday’s session dealt with agility sessions, the three basics of batting (the grip, stance & back lift) and ended with match scenarios.
Nedd, who is credited with developing most of the Demerara and National U-15, U-17 & U-19 players of today from their formative years in the game, expressed satisfaction with how things went on day one.
“I am very pleased with the first day and it gives me great joy to see five and six year olds falling in love with cricket by being given the opportunity to be exposed to the game at that early age. And that’s one of the reasons that I remain involved with cricket despite the stress and fight-down involved in cricket in Guyana,” Nedd said.
“From this Academy we are going to select an Academy U-13 team to play against a Tobago Cricket Association U-13 side which will tour Guyana later this month,” Nedd informed.
Nedd, one of the better off-spinners to play during the last quarter century, plans to soon hold a ‘spin clinic’ with the help of a few of the good past off-spin bowlers that are still around now.
“I have notice that most of the present young spinners tend to bowl too fast and there is a definite problem with the biomechanics of the off-spinners resulting in them delivering the ball with a bent elbow,” Nedd added.
It is understood that the actions of off-spinners Richie Looknauth and Sagar Hatheramani were looked at by officials during last month’s regional under-17 tournament in Tobago.
Nedd said that at the under-17 level most of the players had to write CXC exams around the same time that the tournament was held so their focus just before the regional tournament was not entirely on cricket.
The Guyana U-19 player, who made his youth team debut in 1992, felt that the adverse weather in Guyana robbed the team of turf practice and contributed to Guyana not being able to win the tournament.
“Another thing I have noticed with the U-17 team is that we get better as the tournament progress and that happened again this year as we won our last three matches after losing the first two. Had we started with wins, our confidence would have been higher and I think we would have done much better,” Nedd noted when responding the question on why he though Guyana failed to win the U-17 tournament.

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