GCB to meet Education Ministry officials to discuss school cricket programme

See below statement by the Guyana Cricket Board

President of the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) Bissoondyal Singh has indicated his readiness to institute a very comprehensive school cricket development programme.

In this regard, the GCB will soon be meeting with officials of the Ministry of Education to discuss the implementation of the school cricket programme for 2022 onwards.

The Board plans to place emphasis on nursery, primary and secondary schools, with the nursery aspect being formally explored for the first-time in the history of GCB’s cricket administration. The nursery school’s cricket main focus is to introduce cricket related skills to kids at an early age.

These training and development activities will be carried out across all three counties of Guyana under the categories Nursery, Under-9, Under-11, Under-13, Under-15, Under-17, Under-19 and will feature key development areas of male and female cricket.

All activities will begin with the training of students interested in playing the sport to facilitate the identification of these players for competitive matches.

With the exception of Under-9 cricket activities, the competitions will be played from an inter-zone stage before graduating to players participating at the inter-county level.

The Under-9 category will be played under an inter-school format which will be conducted for the other school categories also in 2023.

To support this initiative, the GCB will engage the Ministry of Education to permit the conduct of cricket related activities on Friday afternoons within and among schools.

Additionally, President Singh has plans for the establishment of his country-wide academies along with a cricket college which he feels will enhance the all-round development of our cricketers and for giving those who may not become a professional cricketer, the opportunity to have a career in other areas.

A number of professional facilitators will be involved in the learning exercises that are designed to suit the student-athlete.

The training activities are expected to include lateral areas of development, giving players an opportunity to consider careers in other related cricket areas such as Match Referee, Umpire, Scorer, Curator, Coaching, Manager, Statistician, Physiotherapy/Strength and Conditioning and Administrative responsibilities.

These training activities will include the conduct of Cricket West Indies coaching certification courses and pathway activities to umpire certification courses.

It will also include the component to meet the ‘player’, where national players will impart their cricketing knowledge to students.