The Ed­i­tor,

It was Sat­ur­day, March 7, 2020, at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my lo­cat­ed at Tarou­ba, South Trinidad - venue for the four-day re­gion­al match be­tween arch-ri­vals Trinidad & To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos.

I was seat­ed high up in the TTCB Sky box host­ed by the pres­i­dent, Az­im Bas­sarath. Two of the guests that day were the par­ents of Joshua Da Sil­va, Michael and Car­o­line Da Sil­va. Their son had scored 77 in the first in­nings and they were anx­ious­ly await­ing his sec­ond in­nings knock. T&T was in con­trol of the match.

I had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to chat with them for over two hours. Apart from his love for cur­ry, they proud­ly spoke about his greater love for sports and in par­tic­u­lar, the won­der­ful game of crick­et.

Ac­cord­ing to his par­ents, Josh is the em­blem of dis­ci­pline, hard work and hu­mil­i­ty.

Josh came out to bat, but this time around, he fell for 15, bowled by a top de­liv­ery from fast bowler Chemar Hold­er.

"Good ball," ac­knowl­edged his dad. T&T even­tu­al­ly won the match by 147 runs.

Ear­li­er in Jan­u­ary, Josh scored his maid­en first-class hun­dred (113*) vs Ja­maica at the same venue.

Fast for­ward to De­cem­ber 11, 2020, at the Basin Re­serve Crick­et Ground, Welling­ton, New Zealand.

Josh was one of the six re­serves se­lect­ed for the New Zealand tour. It was on­ly af­ter the reg­u­lar wick­et­keep­er Shane Dowrich pulled out for "per­son­al rea­sons" that he was draft­ed in­to the Test squad for the sec­ond test.

At the age of 22, Joshua Da Sil­va be­came the sixth West In­di­an wick­et-keep­er to score a half-cen­tu­ry on test de­but and the first since 2005. In a los­ing cause, he scored a well-craft­ed 57 in the sec­ond in­nings in 84 balls with six fours. Josh looked rather com­fort­able play­ing against the Ki­wi world-class pace at­tack of Southee, Boult, Wag­n­er and Jamieson.

Joshua Da Sil­va had al­ready laid a sol­id foun­da­tion to play crick­et at the high­est lev­el and more so in for­eign con­di­tions.

In Jan­u­ary 2016, Josh was part of an Un­der-17 Good­will Tour to New Zealand. Ac­cord­ing to his coach and men­tor, An­dré Lawrence (a for­mer T&T all-rounder), Josh ex­celled on the tour, scor­ing over 500 runs. The lo­cal boys won ten out of eleven games.

In 2017, Josh was the re­cip­i­ent of the Kieron Pol­lard Schol­ar­ship Scheme that took him to Eng­land for a pe­ri­od of al­most six months. He played third di­vi­sion club crick­et for Sur­rey-based Old Wim­ble­don­ian CC and av­er­aged over 60!

As con­grat­u­la­tions poured from all quar­ters af­ter his suc­cess­ful test de­but, his dad re­vealed to me that dur­ing his col­lege days, Josh was asked to choose be­tween crick­et and foot­ball - both of which he played du­ti­ful­ly for his al­ma mater, St. Mary's Col­lege.

The right choice was made.

Joshua Da Sil­va's dream to be­come a West In­di­an test crick­eter has been ful­filled and he wants to keep that dream alive.

Reza Abasali

Stu­dent of West In­di­an Crick­et His­to­ry

El So­cor­ro