By Neto Baptiste
Two senior men’s West Indies players and a total of five Leeward Islands players have been selected in a 14-member Antigua and Barbuda senior men’s cricket team for the Leeward Islands Three Day Tournament set to bowl off on February 18.
Leading the selections is all-rounder Rahkeem Cornwall and Hayden Walsh Jr, both senior West Indies and Leeward Islands players. They are joined by Leeward Islands teammates Kofi James, Karima Gore and Deran Benta.
Nino Henry and Kenrick Scott will also bring their experience to the squad while Kelvin Pitman, Tyrone Williams Jr, Essan Warner, Elroy Francis Jr, Glenton Williams, Javier Spencer, and Malique Walsh round off the selections.
The team will be led by Cornwall with James as his deputy.
Coach Pernel Watley said the aim is to compete for the crown while exposing a number of the team’s young debutants to a higher level of cricket.
“We have a mixture of experience and youth where we have players like Rahkeem Cornwall, Hayden Walsh, Karima Gore, Kofi James and Deran Benta who are all part of the Leeward’s franchise. Now [we] have some youngsters we are hoping that can get onto the Leeward’s franchise, too, by going to the tournament, doing well, and the selectors would pick them for the franchise. The goal is to win the tournament and the main thing is to get some of the youngsters to the Leeward Islands franchise,” he said.
Watley said the team will continue its preparations with regular training sessions leading into the tournament. He however ruled out the possibility of a training match given both the closeness of the tournament and fact that senior players may not be available.
“We will continue to practice match simulations, we will continue to work on some skills, trying to get the bowlers to put the ball in the right areas and different things like that. We thought about it but because the guys have been playing so many practice matches, we decided that it was only one weekend left before the tournament starts in St Kitts and some of the guys will be playing again for Leewards so they will be around that set up again,” the coach said.
Michael Dover, Shacoy Floyd, Jedidiah Martin and Kadeem Henry were selected as reserve players. The team will be managed by Purnell Joseph.
The Leeward Islands Three Day Tournament is slated to run from February 18 to March 1 and will be jointly hosted by St Kitts and Nevis.