TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO Red Force coach David Furlonge has urged the U-23 cricketers who were part of the recently concluded Namalco U-23 Cup to keep working hard on their game if they want to earn a spot in the senior team.
While a core group of players has been retained for the Red Force squad over the past three seasons, Furlonge said there will be opportunities for younger players to break into the senior squad in the coming years. However, he warned that they will have to put to work.
The Red Force coach noted that there was an abundance of talent at the U-19 and U-23 levels, but it needed to be harnessed and that the players themselves will have a big role to play in this regard.
“During the (Un-23) final, everywhere I walked around the pitch, everyone asked me a similar question if I see any talent there… I think we had four teams with 56 players in total and I think all of them are talented , but it’s up to the player to do the job,” said Furlonge.
“If you want to play the game of cricket, it’s very hard work. You have to dedicate time to training and working on different things,” he said.
“Some players depend on the coach to call the training sessions, maybe on Monday and Friday to work on their game, but what happens on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? What do they do?”
He said the “big question” is what happens to the players after the U-23 tournament.
“I think now we have to sit down as a selection group to pick a sort of 11 stars, get them out there and have some training with them and keep them working together. We must have continuity with them”, said the coach.
“We’ll probably have to pick a team with all-stars in stats and some other players, but what I’ve noticed (is) that as the tournament has progressed, the players have gotten better, which shows that they were out of cricket for a while and now they were coming back in,” he continued.
“I think it’s a good group of players, even some of them that didn’t make it in the tournament. There were 96 U-23 players of which 56 reached the four teams. No U-19 players were included in it, so there are probably 40 more U-19 cricketers. So there’s a wealth of talent, but it’s about harnessing the talent of these young cricketers,” Furlonge added.
He explained that some work would be done with the U-15, U-17 and U-19 teams after looking at the coaches’ report on the players to see what needs to be done to develop them.
He said the U-23s could get similar attention and he noted that some of the players have shown a positive attitude towards training, which he said is a good thing.
“A player like Jevon George, who did well in the U-23 final, I invited him to train with us after the North/South game, but with the understanding that he will come to play with the boys there. Some of the old players don’t like that and you know that one day they come and the next they don’t. These younger players are there every day,” Furlonge said.
“Ryan Bandoo has been training with us for the past two years. Same with Sameer Ali and Justin Manick. I was honest with them that I don’t think they will be in the team for another year or two, but they keep coming and if we have training five days a week, they are here. So some of these guys are doing the work,” he continued.
Furlonge emphasized in the end: “The players must focus on their personal development. I think Trinidad has a wealth of talent, but we just have to see how we can best utilize it.”
