West Indies Vice-Captain Jermaine Blackwood says he is looking to score big runs in their upcoming two-match series away to Zimbabwe.
“I’m feeling pretty good at the moment. I’m hitting the ball very well in the nets,” the 31-year-old told members of the media in a press conference on Friday.
“The way I’m feeling now, I feel like my old self from a few years ago so, hopefully, I can go out there and out in some good performances for the team,” he added.
Blackwood is coming off a modest tour of Australia where he scored 63 runs in four innings at an average of just 15.75. In those four innings he recorded scores of 36, 24, three and zero.
ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Five members of the West Indies Academy have earned places in franchise teams for the first and second rounds of the upcoming West Indies Championship four-day first-class tournament, starting on 31 January.
The West Indies Academy players that have been selected are Kirk McKenzie, left-handed batter for Jamaica Scorpions; Kevin Wickham, right-handed batter for Barbados Pride; Ashmead Nedd, left-arm spinner for Guyana Harpy Eagles; and Teddy Bishop, right-handed batter for Windward Islands Volcanoes. Kelvin Pitman the right-arm fast bowler has been listed in the 13-member provisional squad named by the Leeward Islands Hurricanes.
Graeme West, CWI’s High-Performance Manager who has overseen the West Indies Academy programme since its inception in 2022, anticipates good performances from the players when the tournament bowls off next week in Grenada and Antigua.
Former Chairman of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Senior Selection Panel, Ramnaresh Sarwan, has voiced his displeasure over the non-selection of left-arm spinner Antony Adams to the Guyana Harpy Eagles 13-man squad for the first two rounds of the West Indies Four-Day Championship.
“Injustice to a young man who has worked tremendously hard on his game and fitness. Who without any doubt deserve[s] to be in [the] Guyana team,” Sarwan stated Thursday on Facebook in response to the justification the current selection panel gave for Adams’ non-selection.
Sarwan was the man in charge of the selection panel when the GCB Executive took office in March 2021, but had to step down when he was elevated to the West Indies selection panel in January 2022.
Ravindranauth Seeram, a former national coach and player, replaced Sarwan as chair of the GCB panel.
Out-of-favour Test gloveman Shane Dowrich has been appointed captain for Barbados Pride's opening two matches of the regional first-class championship.
The 31-year-old played 35 Tests for West Indies but has not featured since abruptly leaving the Test tour of New Zealand in 2020.
He led one of the teams during the recent Barbados Legends Series, which serves as preparation for the Regional First Class Championship.
After a protracted 14-month break, Dowrich returned to first-class action last year when he turned out for Pride in the regional championship but his returns proved meagre, averaging 27 from five matches.
Former West Indies and Jamaica all-rounder Chris Gayle hopes to revive his academy geared towards fostering grass-roots development in 2023.
The Chris Gayle Academy was initially launched in London in 2013 before it made its way to Jamaica in 2014, being operated at his boyhood Lucas Cricket Club under the supervision of the late coach Dennis Miller but has been dormant since the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Gayle, one of the region’s most successful cricketers in all formats of the game, hinted in an interview with OnlyCricket24.com that mismanagement has crippled his academy but said he wants to get it back on track.
“You have to be careful how you let people handle stuff,” Gayle said.
