Experience Good For USA Guyana – Massiah

By Orin Davidson
“Disaccustomcy” is a slang used in Guyana to explain shortcomings in almost every aspect of life.

And it was expected that the USA Guyana team would suffer similarly on their tour of Guyana given their inability to prepare properly due to the unsuitable cold weather at this time of the year.

Steve Massiah

Captain Steve Massiah confirmed the obvious following the team’s 3-0 loss to the Guyana national team in the Goodwill series that concluded on Tuesday (December 4).

“As we all knew, this tour would be a difficult one, we were hard pressed to win because of not playing competitively for months now,” he stated.

However, in stating that the pitches in Guyana were too slow, was a reverse expectation from the captain, as the general feeling is that New York matting surfaces have no pace compared to even the slowest turf surfaces.

However, Massiah stated that the conditions at the GCC ground and Providence National Stadium made life difficult for his team as they had to adjust to compensate for dead tracks there.

He also pointed out that the recreational status of New York cricket made the young Guyana squad minus stars Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Narsingh Deonarine, prove an insurmountable challenge to overcome.

“We have to face reality, cricket is a recreational sport in New York, these guys play all year around and this is what they do for a living, to come here and dominate them would take a special effort to do so,” the captain pointed out.”

But he added that “the experience the team would gain coming here and playing against real opposition, hopefully they could take this back to the United States and be better players”.

Massiah himself, who was expected to carry the batting, had modest returns in the first two games, came into his own somewhat in the final fixture. He and his old scoring partner Lennox Cush finally clicked when they came together in the biggest partnership of the series of 91 for the second wicket at Albion. Massiah ended with 33 and Cush 52.

He felt though that the youngsters showed the ability to adapt better, the statistics did not fully reflect the performances of Karran Ganesh and Kumar Nandalall.

Left arm spinner Nandalall caused anxiety in the Guyana camp in the closing stages of the Albion game where they slumped from a comfortable 143 runs for three wickets to scrape home to 156-7, to win by three wickets, the narrowest of the three victories. Nandalall ended with two wickets for 12 runs.

Newcomer fast bowler Telson Johnson also showed some fight and one would’ve concluded he deserved more work in the two games he played at Albion and GCC.

Sixteen year-old Gregory Sewdial, the United States’ Most Valuable Player Under-19 awardee in 2007, got one game but did not last long at Albion, being stumped for three.

Veteran Sudesh Dhaniram who has been the linchpin of the middle order for several years, was disappointing with the bat, and did not get the opportunity to do damage with his medium pace seam bowling which might’ve been troubling in the conditions.

McGarrell lived up to his expectations as a valuable all-rounder and must be satisfied with his returns which unfortunately he would not be given the opportunity to build on in the near future as he was dropped from the Guyana team to contest the Stanford Twenty/20 series.
Orin Davidson Column Homepage