Georgetown, Guyana – The Guyana Jaguars, this country’s franchise in the West Indies Cricket Board’s (WICB) Professional Cricket League (PCL) is confident of a successful title defence for the upcoming season of the six-team tournament.
Guyana Jaguars head coach, Esuan Crandon (centre) with Veerasammy Permaul and Devendra Bishoo
The team is continuing preparations for the four-day tournament at the Georgetown Cricket Club (GCC) ground under the watchful eyes of coach Esaun Crandon who stated that his charges are hard at work for the defence of the prestigious title.
Crandon said, “We are quite pleased with the squad that we have put together for this upcoming season since most of the guys played last year and we are quite happy with them. We are confident with the group of fast bowlers we have. Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done and we have been putting in some work with them and hopefully this year we want to see better, some better showing from them.”
The Jaguars swept the inaugural edition of the WICB’s revamped, regional, first-class four-day tournament with 148 points, outscoring the second-placed Barbados Pride who managed only 117 points.
The Windward Islands Volcanoes (109); Jamaica (75); Trinidad and Tobago Red Force (65); and Leeward Islands Hurricanes (54) were the finishers of the tournament in that order last year, and Crandon believes that this time around, things will be different.
“It’s going to be more difficult this year for us with the other teams. They had a good chance to look at the brand of cricket we have been playing and what made us successful in the last season,” coach Crandon stated
He added, “We will have to lift our game and come out and just continue doing the basic things right and continue to build on what we started last year.”
The Jaguars have at their disposal Christopher Barnwell, Ronsford Beaton, Devendra Bishoo, Anthony Bramble, Rajendra Chandrika, Assad Fudadin, Shimron Hetmyer, Veerasammy Permaul, Raymon Reifer, Vishaul Singh; Tagenarine Chanderpaul, Ryan Hinds (Barbados), Keon Joseph, Javon Searles (Barbados), Paul Wintz
The tournament is set to begin in November.
(Taken from Guyana Chronicle)