By Neto Baptiste
Longtime cricket coach and former player, Ajarni Frederick, has confirmed his departure as head coach of the Pigotts Crushers, citing personal reasons for his decision.
Frederick, who has been with the Pigotts Sports Club since 2018 made the disclosure while speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show.
“There [are] a lot of personal issues for me … and I won’t disclose them here, but it’s more in-house stuff that I think could have been fixed, but [were not]. I guess conversations were not had to get that sorted out but it’s over a period of time and not just one year, two years, or three years,” he said.
Speculations were rife following the team’s loss to rivals PIC Liberta Blackhawks in the semifinals of the cricket association’s two day competition in March that Frederick’s position as coach was in doubt.
The coach however asserted that this had no bearing on his decision, reminding that in 2019 the team won the two day title under his tenure.
“Only trophy I landed was the two day and we got to a lot of finals and semifinals but we didn’t get over the hurdle. There were a lot of factors there also where you need people who have championship experience and we didn’t have that pedigree as yet so we had to work towards that process. The year that we won we had Tyrone Theophile, so we had some sort of leadership in the background, which is understanding how to win key moments. We were doing well in games but we were losing moments that were essential to us,” he said.
Reports are that Frederick could be headed to defending champions in both the two day and 40 over formats — the PIC Liberta Blackhawks — and although he did not confirm the talks, the coach said he has been in dialogue with a number of teams.
“A conversation was had with different clubs and Liberta was one of them, so I can’t just say it’s Liberta but there is a high potential because there are a lot of things mom wanted of me [one being] she would like for me to coach Liberta eventually and maybe this is the best time for me to kind of give her that,” the coach said.
Crushers lost by 73 runs to Blackhawks in the two day final but failed to make the final four in the Super 40 earlier this year.
