Francis pleased with development of young cricketers

Chief Executive Officer of the Jamaica Cricket Association Courtney Francis says despite the poor results of their junior teams at recent regional competitions, the organisation continues to produce a lot of quality players for the West Indies team at various levels.

Jamaica’s Under-19 team returned to the island recently after finishing fifth at the regional championships. The Jamaicans endured a tough time at the tournament after three of their five matches were rained out.

“One of the things is that we keep stressing winning, we are not stressing the number of players that are transitioning to the next level,” said Francis.

“The West Indies just selected a squad from the Under-19 tournament and we have four players in it, and so the little that they saw would have convinced them to pick four of our players,” he said.

“What is happening now, if you look at the West Indies set-up, you will see that we are matriculating players to all levels of the team, because we have a good representation on all the various teams,” Francis added.

Plans for continued growth

He pointed out that the association has put in place a strategic plan to ensure they continue grow and develop the country’s junior players.

“We have a strategic plan that is shared by all our members, and we had a retreat last year and the plans are working well for us because the targets that we have set, we are in line with those,” said Francis.

“We have been doing well over the years because if you notice, our Under-15 team did well and our Under-19 team did well too,” he said.

“The Under-19 may not have won the competition because of rain, as the final round of matches was washed out without a ball being bowled, (but) I am pleased with the development of our cricket,” Francis underlines.