By Neto Baptiste
Veteran wicketkeeper-batsman, Jauri Edwards, is set to leave competitive cricket after over 25 years as a player with the Empire cricket team.
The player made the disclosure while speaking on the Good Morning Jojo Sports Show, stating that over the past number of years, he has been focused on grooming others to take over the reins.
“With the likes of Micah McKenzie and Tanez Francis and so on, I think we are definitely headed in the right direction. We are trying to get some more youngsters on board to basically go with the likes of Kenrick Scott and T Willy [Tyrone Williams Jr] and Damian Lowenfield and so on, because, look at it from this perspective, I don’t have much longer to go in the game,” he said.
“This season will make 25 years I am playing for Empire and could very well be my last season because the mind is willing, but the body is not able. I think Justin Athanaze as well, the role that he has played, I don’t see him going on for too much longer, so our role in the team is pretty much a supporting cast to the younger fellas and trying to bring them through,” he added.
Edwards, who also represented the Leeward Islands in a one-off match in 2011 against the Windward Islands, has his eyes set on becoming an ICC match referee.
“I recently applied to CWI for a job in any capacity because I know normally you’d have to go through that route in order to get to that stepping stone, so I am just holding out to see where I go from here because I can’t do anything unless the good Father puts the necessary people in place to give me what my heart desires,” he said.
Edwards made his debut for Empire back in 1998, but represented Antigua and Barbuda in under-16 cricket one year earlier in 1997.