Michael and Car­o­line Da Sil­va could hard­ly find the words to de­scribe how they felt as their son Joshua Da Sil­va made his Test de­but against New Zealand on Fri­day (Thurs­day night - T&T time).

“Words, re­al­ly and tru­ly, can­not ex­plain the feel­ings we had,” his fa­ther Michael said of his son who is com­pet­ing in the on­go­ing sec­ond Test at the Basin Re­serve in Welling­ton, New Zealand.

Both of Joshua’s par­ents are avid crick­et fans who trav­el around the coun­try watch­ing him play the game for his club Queen’s Park Crick­et Club (QPCC). They al­so co­or­di­nate a Gatorade Un­der-15 Zon­al tour­na­ment which is aimed at giv­ing young play­ers a chance to play com­pet­i­tive crick­et.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day, his moth­er Car­o­line said, “It’s won­der­ful when you jour­ney with a child that can walk in their dream and that’s an amaz­ing feel­ing to know that you were part of the jour­ney and both my hus­band and I walked the en­tire jour­ney with him, through the good and bad.”

Michael re­called how Cana­da tried get­ting Da Sil­va to play crick­et for them but the wick­et-keep­er/bats­man turned them down say­ing he want­ed to play for the West In­dies.

“I told my wife all through last night and I even told Joshua this when I spoke to him this morn­ing (Fri­day), I couldn’t be­lieve that I was look­ing at you on the field play­ing Test crick­et for the West In­dies. I just couldn’t be­lieve this was hap­pen­ing,” Michael said.

Joshua’s fa­ther point­ed to four mo­ments that made him emo­tion­al.

He said, “The first time was when I saw him re­ceiv­ing his cap from Roger Harp­er. I saw Josh and I think that Josh might have want­ed to get a lit­tle bit emo­tion­al too. The sec­ond time was when I saw him walk­ing out on the field with the team. The third time was lis­ten­ing to the West In­dies an­them and the cam­era was go­ing down the play­ers and then it zoomed in on Joshua for a cou­ple of sec­onds and then the fourth time was when he got that first catch.”

Both Car­o­line and Michael ad­mit­ted they didn’t think he would make his Test de­but on this tour. Da Sil­va was on the West In­dies A team but Shane Dowrich pulled out of the sec­ond Test for per­son­al rea­sons hand­ing the 22-year-old, his op­por­tu­ni­ty for a Test de­but.