(GUYANACHRONICLE)GUYANA’S First Class openers Tagenarine Chanderpaul and Shimron Hetmyer along with promising all-rounder Kemo Paul, will depart these shores today for Trinidad and Tobago, where they will be members of the West Indies Under-19 preparatory camp ahead of the West Indies Cricket Board/Professional Cricket League NAGICO Super50 tournament.
The WICB had decided to include the Under-19 team along with the Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) in this year’s tournament, with the youth side who will be under the guidance of head coach Roderick ‘Roddy’ Estwick, using the tournament as preparations for next year’s ICC Youth World Cup.
The Under-19s have been drawn in Group B next to the Jamaica Franchise, Leeward Islands Hurricanes and hosts Trinidad and Tobago Red Force, while CCC have been drawn in Group A along with defending champions Barbados Pride, Guyana Jaguars and Windward Islands Volcanoes.
The preliminary competition will be played on a non-elimination format with each side playing the others in their group once and two matches will be contested each day at either the Queen’s Park Oval, the T&T Cricket Board’s National Cricket Centre (NCC) in Couva or Shaw Park in Scarborough, Tobago.
The top two teams from each group will advance to the semi-finals which will be contested at the picturesque Queen’s Park Oval, the same venue which will be used to host the final on January 24, with the 25th being an alternate day in the event of rain or any natural disaster.
This is the 18-year-old Chanderpaul’s – eldest son of dependable Guyana and West Indies middle-order batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul – second West Indies Under-19 call-up.
He was selected for last year’s Under-19 World Cup in United Arab Emirates at age 16 and scored an unbeaten 84, paving the way for the West Indies Under-19 team to come away with a 167-run thrashing of Zimbabwe Under-19 cricket team in Abu Dhabi.
Chanderpaul struck six fours during his knock and forged fifty-plus partnerships withhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shimron_Hetmyer&action=edit&redlink=1 and Jonathan Drakes to propel the team to a formidable 275 for 6 from their 50 overs.
To date, Chanderpaul has played nine first-class matches for Guyana, during which time he has scored 371 runs at an average of 20.61, with a top score of 43 against CCC, when Guyana played that team in the 2014 WICB Regional four-day tournament in March last year, a game the Guyanese lost.
In 2013, the younger Chanderpaul was named WICB/West Indies Players Association Under-19 Cricketer-of-the-Year, while he returned last year to lead the Guyanese batting lineup to the double in the WICB Regional Under-19 tournament that was hosted by the Guyana Cricket Board.
The 18-year-old Hetmyer, who is a temperamental opener has played three first class matches for Guyana to date, scoring a total of 82 runs with a highest score of 47 against Barbados Pride last November, a game the Guyana Jaguars lost by two runs when asked to score 69 for victory.
He first announced his arrival on the Regional scene against Bangladesh in an Under-19 seven-match series in Guyana and last year blasted 18 fours in his 102-ball 128 against Barbados Under-19 in the Regional Under-19 tournament, which together with an unbeaten 103 from Chanderpaul guided Guyana to a 44-run victory.
Hetmyer who racked up 321 runs in six innings in the Under-19 tournament, the most by a single batsman was also adjudged the Most Valuable Player (MVP).
At 16 years of age, Paul who hails from the Cinderella County of Essequibo has done everything on a cricket field for Guyana, from executing the duties of wicketkeeper when needed, to supplying runs as a batsman, not to mention his fast-bowling exploits.
Deservedly, Director of Sport within the National Sports Commission Neil Kumar named and handed over a trophy in that regard – Paul as the Best All-rounder of the 2014 Regional three-day tournament, based on his exploits in the field time and time again for Guyana.
In 2013, Paul led Essequibo to their first-ever Guyana Cricket Board Under-17 title and represented Guyana at the Under-17 level in 2012, 2013 and last year and took it one step further by gaining selection on the Under-19 team even before he had returned with the Under-17 squad.
As an added boost to the trio, they were all part of the Guyana Amazon Warriors preparatory camp before and during last year’s Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and prior to their departure for T&T today, were members of the Guyana Jaguars training unit.
