Ramnarine conducts wrist-spin workshop in Guyana

Thu, Mar 27, '08

 

from SEAN DEVERS in Guyana

He still spun the ball prodigiously, extracted bounce and exhibited wily flight, but never once beat the bat.

On a slow Malteenoes Sports club pitch in Georgetown, former West Indies leg-spinner Trinidadian Dinanath Ramnarine could not beat the bat because there was nobody batting.

The 32-year-old, who captured 45 wickets from 12 Tests between 1998 and 2002, was conducting a one-day Wrist-spin workshop organized by the Reds Perriera Sports Foundation (RPSF) in Guyana on Friday (Good Friday) and said afterwards that he was highly impressed with the young talent on show.

On a National Holiday, eighth of the 12 participants, including one female, showed up for the session which commenced at 10:00hrs while Guyana’s latest first-class leg-spinner Davendra Bishoo turned up for the post lunch session after practicing with the West Indies team.

Ramnarine who captured 252 wickets from 68 first-class games, was assisted by recently appointed Guyana assistant coach Reon King, Michael Hyles, Oswald Waldron and Daniel Richmond and interacted wonderfully with the young bowlers who were selected from all three counties in Guyana.

Ramnarine, the President of the West Indies Players Association (WIPA), demonstrated the various styles of leg-spin bowling and offered advice and encouragement as his charges went through their paces in overcast conditions.

Ramnarine who retired at age 28, has not bowled competitively in two years but seemed to have lost none of his skill. The WICB member who arrived in Guyana early on Friday morning, spoke to the players about his experiences as a Test player and urged them to remember what they would have learnt and to keeping working hard to improve their game.

“I would like to thank Mr Perreira for giving me this opportunity to work with theses young players and he must be commended for what his Sports Foundation is doing for the development of Sports in Guyana. I have never been asked to ever do something like this and it is an honor to be of help to Guyana’s cricket,” Ramnarine said.

Ramnarine explained that he has memories of several enjoyable battles against Guyana both at the regional youth and senior levels and was high in praise for the lone female participant, Guyana Woman’s team left-arm back-of-the-hand spinner Nekita Toney whom he hopes will soon break into the West Indies Women’s team.    

Ramnarine said the workshop has inspired him to try to have more of these sessions for young players in the West Indies and pledged the support of West Indies players to help improve the game in the region.

“WIPA gave me the time off to come here and paid for my flight and accomadation and we fully support the work of the Reds Perriera Sports Foundation. I hope I will be invited again to do a follow up course here. It is good that this Foundation is also using Caribbean people as resource personnel. There is so much talent around the Caribbean but we need to harness that talent and put proper systems in place to develop that talent so that we could return to where we once were in World Cricket,” an impassioned Ramnarine said.

Perriera thanked Ramnarine for agreeing to conduct the workshop and opined that the players learnt a lot from the workshop.

“Get fit to play cricket… bowling spin is hard….leg-spin bowling is even harder. This is an investment in you and I am sure Ramnarine would not like to see you guys drop out of the game. We (RPSF) are committed to developing Sports in Guyana and we are grateful for all the help we can get from all involved,” Reds told the youths.

Bishoo, who captured seven wickets on his first class debut two weeks ago, said he was inspired by his talk with Ramnarine and informed that he learnt from the former Test spinner how to make the ball dip at the end of its flight.

The participants were; Shawn Pereira, Michael Harding, Steven Sankar, Nekita Toney, Poorendra Jaigobin, Travis Blyden, Elliot Daniels, Abdel Fudadin.