Bar­ba­di­an-born Carl Jem­mott at­tend­ed Hillview Col­lege in Tu­na­puna, Trinidad and To­ba­go, when it first opened its doors in 1959 and mi­grat­ed to Eng­land in 1962.

An avid crick­eter and coach, Jem­mott even­tu­al­ly es­tab­lished him­self in the Eng­lish game as a coach at Mid­dle­sex and lat­er on worked hard with a young man called Owais Shah, who went on to play for Eng­land.

To­day, Jem­mott nat­u­ral­ly fol­lows West In­dies crick­et and has been one oft he sup­port­ers who are fol­low­ing the team around dur­ing the cur­rent ICC World Cup.

Guardian Me­dia caught up with Jem­mott in Northamp­ton as he pre­pared to go to the Northamp­ton Crick­et Ground to sup­port the West In­dies women's team as they went in­to bat­tle against Eng­land in their sec­ond T20 clash on Fri­day.

Said Jem­mott: "I was born in Bar­ba­dos and my fa­ther was work­ing in Trinidad, so I came and set­tled in Tu­na­puna for three years. At that time I was en­rolled in­to Na­pari­ma Col­lege (the for­mer name of Hillview Col­lege) and be­ing a Bar­ba­di­an I was bet­ter than the lo­cal boys at crick­et.

"So nat­u­ral­ly, I was made the cap­tain of the team and we had some suc­cess­ful years. At that time my fa­ther had to pay for me to at­tend col­lege and it was $16 TT at the time. Al­though it seemed like a lit­tle bit of mon­ey, it was quite a sum for my dad to make­up but he did it."

While in T&T, Jem­mott was al­so in­to ath­let­ics and rep­re­sent­ed Hillview in the St. George East Games in the 800 me­tres and the mile. His broth­er Bri­an was a na­tion­al sprint­er and com­pet­ed against T&T Olympic Gold Medal win­ner Hase­ly Craw­ford.

Af­ter a cou­ple of years, Carl mi­grat­ed to Eng­land and got in­volved in coach­ing. He coached at Mid­dle­sex Coun­ty crick­et club and touched the lives of many young crick­eters who even­tu­al­ly went on to play coun­ty crick­et as well as in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et.

One such play­er was Shah, who made his Eng­land test de­but in 2006 against In­dia dur­ing a tour to the sub­con­ti­nent. The all­rounder even­tu­al­ly went on to play just six tests but played in 71 one day in­ter­na­tion­als and 17 T20 match­es

Carl re­called: "I was a tele­vi­sion en­gi­neer at one point and vis­it­ed the home of the fa­ther of Owais Shah to fix his tele­vi­sion. We start­ed to talk crick­et and he said he had a nine-year-old son back in Pak­istan and every time there is a crick­et match in the vil­lage they used to come and get him to play.

"His fa­ther was a pi­lot, so I told him to bring him to Eng­land to me at Mid­dle­sex. He did and Owais start­ed off with me at the age of nine and went through the ju­nior sys­tem un­til he was picked to play for Eng­land."

Carl, now 72, re­tired from coach­ing and set­tled in Northamp­ton, has many oth­er sto­ries of young crick­eters he had a hand in de­vel­op­ing here in Eng­land. And of course, he still en­joys shar­ing his knowl­edge on the game with young crick­eters. Just re­cent­ly, when West In­dies cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er was play­ing for Northamp­ton, he in­vit­ed the young skip­per to his home at times to dine and al­so to have a chat about crick­et.