THIRTEEN (13) year old Ronaldo Renee from Parika, East Bank Essequibo walked away with four individual awards last Friday night, when the Queenstown based Demerara Cricket Club (DCC) held an Appreciation Ceremony for their Under-13, 15 and 17 cricketers. He took home accolades for Best Fielder in the Under-13 and Under-15 categories, along with Best Batsman and Most Disciplined Player of the Under-15 team, much to the approval of those gathered, especially after the club’s coach Gavin Nedd stated his punctuality at games.
Prior to the presentation of the awards, Nedd gave his audience, which included president of the Georgetown Cricket Association (GCA) Roger Harper, Former West Indies opener Travis Dowlin and Public Relations Officer of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Terry Holder, a review of the recently concluded second annual Summer Clinic.
According to Nedd, the camp which saw the participants, inclusive of two females, being taught the technical aspects of the gentleman’s game along with being lectured on the Laws of Cricket by Matthew Kissoon , and on Discipline and Leadership from Harper, was a success.
DCC president Alfred Mentore, himself a former GCA president, lauded Nedd for the hard work he has put in at the club, calling it yeoman service especially when you look at the success rate of the club over the past year.
“DCC for the past 12 months won two GCA organized Under-13 tournaments, one Under-15 tournament, Digicel first division T20 tournament along with the GCA two day first division ,while we placed second to Georgetown Cricket Club in the Open limited overs tournament at the senior level, achieving all this and more under Nedd’s coaching.
It was the vision of us at DCC, that the clinic would be used as a vehicle to mentor the young children and build their capacity at this crucial stage of their development, with the goal of producing high quality players to represent the club, Georgetown, Demerara, Guyana and later on, the West Indies,” stated Alfred.
He continued, “Our strategy was to train hard (something Nedd approved of), be discipline and spend as much time possible in the nets learning and developing the fundamentals of the game we love, for all would know this is where young cricketers whether male or female, learn their skills and the basics of the game at the crucial stage of their cricketing careers.
In contemplating the level of competition and the highly competitive environment our players face, Nedd and I sat down over breakfast while in Trinidad for the WIPA tournament last year and conceptualized the idea of the clinic which was basically to inform, educate and stimulate conditions amongst other ideas and made same a reality on our return.”
Mentore took the time to call on other clubs in the City of Georgetown to emulate DCC and invest in their club’s cricketing structure, the youths who are the future, since it would allow for more talent feeding while creating a greater pool of players for Guyana, a sentiment approved by Harper in his brief remarks.
Mentore also commended the efforts of the GCA who provided the competitions for the young cricketers to partake in, saying, “The wisdom of playing cricket at this level should be applauded” while encouraging the continuation of such.
As managing Director of a Real Estate agency, Mentore extended an olive branch to the GCA, saying he is willing to play a part in the further development of cricket in Georgetown by sponsoring a tournament even though the critics would say DCC ,who will be celebrating their centenary anniversary next year, will win same.
He also called on the GCA’s Cricket Development Committee to focus some more on the distaff side of the game especially in the schools, since clubs can be easily linked to the schools from where the feed will pass to the Inter-association, County and then the national level.
Other awardees on the night included Achmead Nedd (Special Award), Shanor De Souza (Best All-rounder), Romain Muniram (Most Disciplined Player) and Xavier Smith (Most Valuable Player) in the Under-13 category for 2010.
For this year’s GCA/De Sinco Under-13 tournament, Timothy Mc Almont was named the Best Batsman and Fielder respectively while medium pacer Cleyon Mc Ewan won the Best Bowler award, coupled with Renee’s accolades.
For the Under-15 ‘A’ team, Michael Shalim won two accolades after being named the MVP and Best Batsman, Kevin Imloch (Best Fielder) and Chandra Persaud (Most Disciplined Player) while on the ‘B’ team, Smith took the Best Bowler Award while Travis Persaud was named MVP and Kemal Savory took home a Special Award for finding a place in the Essequibo team, while being on the standby list for Guyana.
Shameer Griffith was named the Best Graduating Student from this year’s Summer Clinic and Savory (Best Junior Wicketkeeper) while Jahron Byron and Andrew Gibson received Special Awards for their sterling performance in the Demerara Inter-Association and GCA second division tournaments respectively.
All the participants of this year’s Summer Clinic received medals and certificates to that effect and at the end of the night’s proceedings, the awardees and those in attendance were invited to partake in a light snack, compliments of DCC’s vice president Patrick Hardin who was celebrating his birthday.