I Don't Like Cricket, I Love It

For several weeks I’ve been promising the boys who come to cricket training that before I leave, I will arrange some kind of match for them, freeing them from the restraints of practicing and learning to let their innate competitiveness run riot. The difficulty has been that we are in the middle of football season, which presents two problems – it would be difficult to arrange a match against another school as it is very unlikely they’d be training for cricket yet, and use of the school playing field on the two hour slot on Fridays when both shifts are free to play sports is prioritized for the football team.

'A' Shift celebrate their victory

The first problem was easily solved – as I have to run separate training sessions for the two shifts, it made sense to organize a match between the two. This met with enthusiastic approval from all the boys, as beating your own school mates is even better than beating people you don’t know. The second problem was a bit thornier, however – Fridays are the only time when Mr Thomas can train the entire football squad together at once, and is therefore when he holds practice matches. Much to the frustration of all the boys who play cricket, we were going to have to be patient until, finally, Mr T said we could have a match on Friday 18^th November, my penultimate Friday at the school and in Jamaica.

News of the match obviously caused wild excitement, and my next problem was going to be team selection. Anyone who has ever had any involvement in coaching youth sport will understand the genuine torment and soul-searching I went through as I agonized over who was going to play – how do you break it to a group of enthusiastic under-11s who turn up for training day in, day out that they’ve not made the team for a big match without feeling like a complete and utter bastard?

An expectant crowd awaits

My first tactic was to rely on natural selection to whittle them down – many of the boys are terrible time keepers and I was fairly confident that, despite making it clear that everyone had to come to a final practice for each shift if they wanted to be on the team, a sizeable number would fail to show and could therefore be reasonably discarded straight away with my conscience clear. This worked too well with the ‘A’ shift – attendance at practice was unusually low all week, and after the final session I still only had eight players. In the end I had no choice but ask permission for some of the ASTEP boys, who are on a special programme to help them catch up to high-school standards on a separate timetable to the rest of the school, to be excused lessons on Friday so they could play. The problem with this was that the ASTEP boys are older, bigger and stronger than the other students – Clayton (known as ‘Granddad’ he looks so old) and Owayne in particular are both about my height, built like rugby players and capable of bowling quick enough to make me think twice about facing them without pads on. I tried to balance this out by picking two of the more promising younger boys, Ronaldo from Grade 2 and Tyreece from Grade 1, but even then the smart money was firmly with ‘A’ Shift.

'B' Shift captain Joseph Pryce hits a boundary

For the ‘B’ Shift team I faced entirely the opposite dilemma – I had more than 30 boys turn up for final practice. Even so, there was a serious issue with bowlers – as far as possible, I wanted to stick to proper match rules, which meant having bowlers who knew how to keep their arms straight and bowl legally. So my fist selection criteria was quite simply, do you fling or no? No? Then congratulations, you’re on the team. But knowing that ‘A’  Shift still had by far the better players, I had to break one of my principles. I’d warned some of the boys who liked to flit off to football practice and then come over to me to have a bat before disappearing again that I expected them to train properly with me all week if they wanted to make the game. Two of the genuinely good players on ‘B’ Shift, Joseph Pryce and Dan Dan, didn’t take the slightest bit of notice and, right on cue, wandered off half way through the final training session to play football. I was pretty pissed off and let them know as much, telling them they could forget playing on Friday, but in the back of my mind I knew they’d have to play – it’d be a slaughter otherwise. Just to improve my mood, it started raining. Still unsure of who to put in five or six places, I had to hastily reschedule the final selection session until 10am Friday, an hour before the big match was due to start.

Friday morning broke fair and hot, with a gentle breeze from the north mercifully taking the edge off the humid conditions. With a dusty, stone-strewn strip of denuded running track scattered with occasional clumps of wiry grass serving as the wicket, I fancied the ball might just get the better of the bat. There was also the slight concern that the ball might get the better of the boys as well – we were using a pretty hard plastic white ball, with a solitary pair of pads shared between the two batsmen the sole form of protection for anyone on the field, which meant byes would probably feature heavily in the scoring as I got the impression whoever was stuck keeping wicket wouldn’t fancy going after the ball with bare hands much.

'A' Shift opener Shamar Casanova

I’d told 18 boys from ‘B’ Shift to come Friday morning, knowing in my head that six of them would definitely be playing and wanting to take a look at the others to fill the final places. More than 25 turned up, all carrying kit and eager to play, but with only about 40 minutes to run the rule over the dozen or so I’d singled out the previous practice, I had to break hearts before a ball had even been bowled and tell those who weren’t on the ‘squad list’ that they wouldn’t get a look in. Then more bad news – Dan Dan, who was nailed on as opening batsman with captain Pryce, forlornly told me he was sick and didn’t want to play. Good news for little Akeem Shaw, who snatched the final place made available. However, things weren’t all entirely well for ‘A’ Shift either – three of the team I’d picked two days earlier, including little Tyreece ‘Chineyman’ who, for a six-year-old, has a great eye with the bat, didn’t turn up, meaning I had to rush in whoever else had turned up hoping for a game.

Tavin on his way to figures of 3 for 7

The match was to be played as 15 overs per side, with a maximum of three overs per bowler. ‘A’ Shift won the toss and chose to bat, with captain Jammar Barrett and Shamar Casanova, promoted in place of the absent Ramone Oakley, opening. The pair made a solid start despite some tight bowling early on, plundering a boundary apiece off the bowling of Justin in second over. But the advantage swung in favour of ‘B’ Shift with the introduction of tidy left-armer Tavin in the fourth over, removing Jammar caught and bowled for seven after a typically undisciplined hoik from him. ‘B’ Shift pressed home the advantage in the next over, Tajay getting Shamar to play all around a straight one to be bowled for nine, but their joy was to be short-lived – Jammar’s dismissal had brought Clayton to the crease, and the gentle giant took no time in announcing his intentions, smashing the first ball he received from Tavin for four. That was to be the first of 12 boundaries, including two maximums, as Granddad put the entire ‘B’ Shift attack to the sword in merciless fashion, eventually retiring on an unbeaten 53. Support was sparse bar from an entertaining cameo from Oraine Stevenson, who bludgeoned a six and a four before trying a shot too many against Tavin and being hauled out caught. Tavin secured a bit of personal glory the very next ball when he clean bowled big Owayne Bryan, who had been muttering about how he should be batting further up the order, for a golden duck, handing the left-armer impressive innings figures of 3 for 7. However, it was not enough to prevent ‘A’ Shift posting an imposing 137 for 7, which given the pitch conditions was going to take some chasing.

'Granddad' Clayton, who top-scored with 53no

‘A’ Shift’s defense of their total couldn’t have started in worse fashion, however. Pryce, probably the most technically gifted batsman on either team, quickly unsettled the normally accurate Twain Campbell with a four off his second ball, punishing the wayward balls that followed to take 17 off the first over. As well as plenty of runs coming off the bat, byes began to be leaked alarmingly. Whereas Pryce had marshaled his troops admirably, setting good fields and making decisions with authority, Jammar was all over the place in his captaincy, standing with his hands in his pockets while his fielders argued over who should be where and leaving gaping holes for overthrows and byes to whistle to the boundary. The score was 38 after just two overs, and the momentum was firmly with the batting side when Gevaughn, opening in place of Dan Dan, was run out for 18. Much of ‘B’ Shifts’ hopes now rested with Pryce, but even when he was dismissed for an attractive 32, which included seven boundaries, by opposite number Jammar, things still looked good – with six wickets in hand and 7 overs remaining, knocking off the 50 runs still needed looked more than doable.

Ronaldo celebrates his match-winning hat-trick

However, in cricket, abject defeat is never too far from the jaws of glorious victory, and following Pryce’s dismissal, there followed a collapse of epic proportions. Its inspiration came from a source both unexpected and, for me, personally very gratifying. I’d picked little Ronaldo Holness from Grade 2 partly because he turned up at every practice and was always very eager to learn, and partly because he has some real promise – for a little lad, his bowling action is very good and he bowls very straight even if he doesn’t quite yet have the power to get the ball the length of the pitch with just a single bounce. The older boys, of course, scoffed – why was I picking this likkle pik’ny, he no good. I ended up having to order them to let him bowl, and with Pryce and Gevaughn still at the crease, his first over was smashed for 16. But undeterred, I ordered him to be brought back for a second spell, and it turned the game. After four dot balls in his second over, with his fifth he clean bowled Joshua for a duck. With the next ball, he tempted Justin into a rash shot which sent the ball flying high into the sky, and was safely snaffled by the waiting Twain. On a hat-trick, there was no question of him not carrying on to finish his spell, and to my great delight, he promptly completed the hat-trick by clean bowling Asa for another duck. Fittingly, he then picked up the final wicket of the game, having Tavin caught by Jamar for yet another duck, sparking scenes of wild celebration and claiming figures of four for 16, the man-of-the-match award and victory for his team. It was a great turn-around for ‘A’ Shift, who won by 32 runs, but a poor capitulation from their opponents, who had no fewer than seven batsmen dismissed without troubling the scorers as they were skittled out for 105.