The Guyana Cricket Board and Ministry of Education collaboration for the National Secondary School’s Cricket League will resume on Monday after an extended break.
This is according to Territorial Development Officer (TDO), Colin Stuart as the League received sponsorship to the tune of $2.5 million from the Demerara Mutual
GCB’s Territorial Development Officer Colin Stuart
Life, Fire and General Insurance Company on Thursday.
As the competition began in 2016, the League is now in the latter stages, as Stuart explained at what point the tournament is expected to resume.
“We are going to be continuing [the League] from Monday with the first phase which is schools versus other schools in their zone, so the two zones to be competed are Upper Demerara/Linden and Wismar areas and the whole Corentyne, Upper and Lower,” the TDO explained. After all zone champions have been known there will be the zone play-offs.
Immediately following this, Stuart announced that the competition will enter the phase which is called the combined phase whereby the selectors will pick the better players from each zone and form a combined team.
“Thereafter, the winners from each zone will play each other and well we have selectors in all the zones so they will come up with a squad so we can have combined schools within zones playing other zones or districts,” Stuart said.
According to Stuart, “the two major districts in the combined phases which are Upper Demerara, the Highway/East Bank and Upper Essequibo right down to the Essequibo coast.”
Therefore, Upper Demerara will play the Highway then they will select players from those two zones to play East Bank and then Upper Demerara to East Bank the better players will play those from West Demerara and then they will play those from Essequibo.
Similarly, “the other major zones Georgetown and Berbice , Georgetown has three districts, North, South and East and they play East Coast and Georgetown/East Coast will merge to play Mahaica/Mahicony and then they will merge to play West Berbice,” Stuart stated.
Meanwhile, Stuart confirmed that the GCB is doing everything in its power to avoid having the talents spotted in this League to fall victim of the system, but rather the authorities will have an elite programme for the players who excel.
“With the school league we utilizing the GTU [Guyana Teachers Union] format at least to a large extent, it is similarly related to the Guyana cricket board, so for example under the GTU format the three area locations for Georgetown and with this format we have a Georgetown Cricket Association so the better players for Georgetown will enter an elite programme for Georgetown and so for east coast and so on so its closely related. Basically those doing the talent identification will be the ones picking out the talent and put them in the programmes we have,” Stuart highlighted.
Both aspects as the interschool and the combined phase will be completed by the end of March.
