Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ni­dia An­drews—a name well known in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s women’s crick­et fra­ter­ni­ty—is now earn­ing the ad­mi­ra­tion and re­spect of the Guyanese peo­ple. Two years ago, a trip to Guyana to play crick­et changed every­thing for her.

When De­mer­ara Crick­et Club coach Clive Grim­mond spot­ted her tal­ent, he in­vit­ed her to join the club for the in­ter-coun­ty tour­na­ment. She per­formed so well that the Guyanese even want­ed her to rep­re­sent their na­tion­al team.

But it’s not just on the field that An­drews is mak­ing an im­pact—it’s off the field where she’s leav­ing a last­ing mark. Her time in Guyana re­vealed a stark re­al­i­ty: the gap in pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the women’s game be­tween the South Amer­i­can na­tion and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.

She told WE mag­a­zine in a re­cent in­ter­view, “I’ll give you the hon­est truth. I don’t think there’s a lot to com­pare. Trinidad is way ahead in women’s crick­et, like in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent uni­verse when it comes to not just de­vel­op­ment but hav­ing peo­ple who would speak to you about crick­et, who would take in­ter­est in you, who would push you. There is none of that over here. The boards are more fo­cused on the men, and that is part­ly due to the fact that they have no one to over­see the af­fairs of the women. In Trinidad, we have the Trinidad and To­ba­go Women’s Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion.”

How­ev­er, in­stead of re­turn­ing home to Trinidad and To­ba­go, where op­por­tu­ni­ties and re­sources are plen­ti­ful, An­drews chose to help raise the stan­dard of women’s crick­et in Guyana.

She would be forced to con­front chal­lenges head-on—ones she had nev­er faced be­fore in her life.

An­drews ex­plained, “There are a lot of fac­tors that can in­flu­ence play­ers not to be a part of crick­et in Guyana. It’s not like Trinidad where you can take a taxi and in two hours you can be in South, or you can be on the East side. Some play­ers have to take boats, and they have to leave around 5 am just to get to George­town if they have to come over here to play.

“The cost of liv­ing is a bit high, and play­ers who are leav­ing their dif­fer­ent coun­tries, it’s not just hours, but it’s a fi­nan­cial strain on them be­cause they have to put ac­com­mo­da­tion in place, be­cause there are boats that would not leave in the morn­ing. They’re not go­ing to get any­thing to go back home.”

She al­so notes that women’s crick­et isn’t giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness it de­serves in Guyana, and many fear be­ing vic­timised for speak­ing out. Still, she has re­mained com­mit­ted to rais­ing the stan­dard of women’s crick­et there. Her ef­forts will cul­mi­nate in a T-15 women’s tour­na­ment this Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion, host­ed by Pre­ci­sion Sports.

Club teams from T&T, Ja­maica, New York, and Guyana will meet in the 15-over tour­na­ment. It will give the young ladies a chance to com­pete against re­gion­al op­po­nents.

How­ev­er, An­drews in­sists this tour­na­ment is not about win­ning or los­ing; it’s far more im­por­tant than that.

She ex­plained, “With this, I want every­one to say, there is some­thing in place for young ladies, for those who may have been in this sport, and they fell out for what­ev­er rea­son, they need to un­der­stand that a tour­na­ment is just a bonus. The main fac­tor is mak­ing sure that they have some­thing in place to help with their de­vel­op­ment year-round.”

Even be­fore the first ball is bowled, the Pa­lo Seco na­tive is busy work­ing on her plans.

She ex­plained, “I want this to be an an­nu­al thing, but not just to say, oh, it’s a tour­na­ment. This should be where women can say, I have train­ing, I’m go­ing to re­ceive prop­er de­vel­op­ment, so when I step out and I go to the high­er lev­el, I’m ready, I’m equipped. They’re not just go­ing to per­form for their coun­try and then get called up to West In­dies, and due to neg­li­gence when it comes to play­er de­vel­op­ment, they can’t go out there and per­form well.”

An­oth­er one of An­drews’ goals is to bring a team from Guyana to Trinidad to com­pete against sev­er­al women’s crick­et clubs.

“I want to be able to give the play­ers a chance to trav­el, those who may nev­er have been able to trav­el, those who have nev­er been on a na­tion­al team, they get to feel how a na­tion­al team goes about their games when they have to leave their coun­try. It’s giv­ing them not just an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play, but an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence some­thing out­side of their coun­try.”

It’s a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for An­drews, who ad­mits her for­ay in­to the sport was a mis­take.

It’s a ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment for An­drews, who open­ly ad­mits that her in­volve­ment in the sport was quite by ac­ci­dent.

When she was 13, dur­ing a sum­mer camp, she had en­rolled in foot­ball on­ly to be told there was no space left. She would try “the next best thing”, which was crick­et. When the coach Ra­jen­dra Ra­mad­hin saw her play, he took An­drews to the un­der-19 women’s train­ing in Barataria. She would go on to play for the na­tion­al un­der-19 team as well as lo­cal club crick­et.

An­drews would al­so es­tab­lish her own crick­et club in T&T, Just for Kicks. “It gave me a chance to see the oth­er side of crick­et, not just be­ing a play­er, but be­ing a team own­er,” she said.

The ad­min­is­tra­tive skills she de­vel­oped with her own crick­et club have proven in­valu­able in her work in Guyana. Though she is now based there, she con­tin­ues to praise one of her un­der-19 coach­es Rhon­da Jones, whom she cred­its with mo­ti­vat­ing her through­out her ca­reer.

An­drews, who as a crick­eter had every ad­van­tage with­in T&T’s thriv­ing women’s crick­et sys­tem, chose in­stead to build the ladies’ game in Guyana—from scratch, as she says. The work is on­ly just be­gin­ning, but for An­drews and Guyanese women’s crick­et, the im­por­tant thing is that it has be­gun.