ST Catherine, Jamaica — Over 20 youngsters from various communities in the sunshine city of Portmore turned out at the Bridgeport Sports Club for the first day of the WICB/JCA Grassroots cricket clinic.
The boys and girls were put through a number of fielding and catching drills under the guidance of coach Hugh Hinds and assistant coach Kirk McKenzie.
The youngsters were drawn from the neighbouring Bridgeport Primary School, Naggo Head Primary, as well as high schools Kingston College, Campion College and St Catherine High.
With Saturday, February 1 being the first of the eight-week programme, Hinds focused on skim catches and casual ground field to get the programme off and running.
“We have some of the youngsters coming back, as well as we have a number of newcomers. We decided that we would start the programme with some catching and fielding fundamentals to improve their hand-eye co-ordination and the children have definitely enjoyed that aspect of the training.”
Hinds added that as the programme progresses he will be implementing other aspects of training.
“Because we are dealing with children ages seven to 13 you have to keep them occupied and engaged at all times, so we will let them have a little knockabout cricket game in the last half-hour of the training just to let them have some fun.”
With half the participants being new to the programme, next week the coaching staff will be teaching the young boys and girls proper bat grip technique as well as proper stance.
“Some of the kids here have never played cricket before, so we will have to teach them everything from scratch. My assistant Kirk McKenzie has been doing a great job with the little ones and we are of the view that if we can get just one of these kids carrying on playing the game we would have succeeded.”
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WICB/JCA Grassroots programme gets going in Portmore
