Domestic and regional cricket resumed in 2022 with a packed schedule. And while the races were played and champions were crowned, the first post-Covid-19 pandemic season was just the beginning of a long road back to competitive action.
The Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board and the West Indies Cricket Board were ready to step in once Covid slowed down and the TTCB will release another packed schedule for 2023 as they try to ensure the local boys are properly prepared to bring home silverware after a trophyless 2022 season. .
Cricket only resumed locally at the end of February and the four-day Cricket West Indies regional competitions as well as regional youth cricket competitions followed.
But for the T&T teams competing on the regional stage, the competition was fierce.
The Red Force senior team finished fourth in the West Indies Championship despite playing all their matches at home.
The youth teams fared no better in the U-15, U-17 and U-19 regional tournaments.
The Leeward Islands won the Rising Stars U-19 Championship which was played in St Vincent. The Windward Islands won the Under-17 Rising Stars Championship held in Trinidad, while Barbados won the Under-15 Rising Stars Championship, which was hosted by the Grenada Cricket Board.
Despite the lack of silverware, TTCB president Azim Bassarath is hopeful that the programs and tournaments they put in place for young cricketers post-Covid will eventually pay dividends next season.
“What we understand from playing the game of cricket is that the more you play against better opposition, the better you get and that’s why we’re trying to give the youngsters as much cricket as they can to play,” said Bassarath.
“The Under-19s will be taking part in Premier Two Division South again next season and they will also have a four-team tournament. What we hope is that playing all this cricket will prepare them properly to compete at regional level.
“I don’t think there’s any other team in the Caribbean that has played more cricket than our U-19 team and we’re hoping that’s over and they’ll be properly prepared to compete at that level.”
He added: “We just came out of the pandemic and people were rusty. Maybe we didn’t have enough cricket, although a lot was played, but hopefully after playing cricket since then and continuing to play, that 2023 will bring more rewards for us.”
Bassarath is happy with what his administration managed to do last year.
“I’m very pleased with what the cricket board did in 2022 with the limited time we had to prepare the teams and play the amount of cricket we played.
“Because of the timing we couldn’t play red-ball cricket but we played a lot of white-ball cricket and before June we played two editions of the T10 blast and that also gave the cricketers a chance to play, which was important.”
As for the senior Red Force players, the local boys still excelled on the regional stage, but the West Indies team will still be in transition until 2023.
Among the seniors, fast bowler Anderson Phillip made the West Indies Test squad and leg-spinner Yannic Cariah was included in the One-Day and T20 International squads.
Akeal Hosein, Joshua Da Silva, Jayden Seales and Nicholas Pooran played with varying degrees of success for the West Indies.
In the Test arena, Seales took 21 wickets in six Tests in 2022. However, he missed the final match of the year against Australia earlier this month due to injury and will now be out for four months.
Meanwhile, Da Silva scored his first Test century against England in Grenada and scored 275 runs in 2022 at an average of 34.37.
The West Indies Test team ended the year on a low note, having lost the two-match series in Australia, but there were some positives, one of which was Da Silva’s progress; Tagenarine Chanderpaul’s detective series “Down Under” is the other.
Tage, son of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, impressed on his Test debut with 51 and 45 in the first Test and 47 and 17 in the second. He also scored 119 and 56 in a tour match before the Test series. Test captain Kraigg Brathwaite was also impressive in Australia, scoring his 11th Test ton and passing 5000 runs in Test cricket.
The Test boys will be looking to start 2023 on a positive note when they head to Zimbabwe and South Africa for the red ball tour.
Meanwhile, in the white-ball format, Hosein was a bright spot after playing 20 ODIs in the 2022 season, grabbing 30 wickets. In 19 T20Is in 2022, Hosein took 18 wickets, however the Windies had a poor run of form which culminated in their early exit from the T20 World Cup in Australia.
After Kieron Pollard retired from international cricket in April, Pooran was named white-ball captain, but the team continued to struggle before eventually losing to Scotland and Ireland in the T20 World Cup pre-tournament qualifiers as they failed to qualify for the the main draw.
The embarrassment led Pooran to resign from the post a few weeks after Phil Simmons stepped down as coach, so the Windies will enter the new team as a team still in transition.
Andre Cooley has been appointed interim coach as the Windies travel to Zimbabwe and South Africa in early 2023 while the CWI go through the recruitment process for a full-time coach, which should be completed by April. Whether a new coach will help turn things around for the regional team next year remains to be seen.
