COOLIDGE, Antigua – Cricket West Indies Academy captain Nyeem Young hailed his side for the success they had sweeping their four-day, first-class series against Emerging Ireland 2-0.
The CWI Academy wrapped up the series success with a 432-run win in the second match inside three days on Monday at the Coolidge Cricket Ground, where they also won the first match by an innings and 134 runs.
“I’m very happy, as a captain, to win this series convincingly,” Young told CWI Media. “I think the boys have performed excellently throughout the series, and there were some excellent individual performances.
“A lot of guys put their hands up in different situations that have led us to this series, so I am very, very happy about the way we went about this series, and I am looking forward to the (West Indies Championship) in February.”
Academy batsman struck three hundreds in the series – left-hander Joshua Bishop, batting at eight, made 102 not out in the first match, and Kevlon Anderson and Kevin Wickham followed up with 125 and 105 not out respectively, in the second match.
None of the CWI Academy bowlers was able to take five wickets in an innings, but teenaged pacer Isai Thorne bowled the most impressive of the lot in the second innings of the first match to end with four for eight.
Young said it was a good all-round effort from the squad and built on the performances of the squad from the Headley-Weekes Tri-Series earlier in the year, and the West Indies Super50 Cup.
“We played some four-day games earlier in the year – the Headley-Weekes games – and we had some KPIs (key performance indicators) for those games in terms of how we really wanted to go about our game, and what was necessary for us when we got ourselves into position, how to win games,” he said.
“We took a lot of that into this series, and a lot of guys put up their hands. It was really good to see batsmen scoring hundreds, and people playing some good parts throughout the game with contributions like 50s and some good partnerships.
“We scored some really good scores throughout the games, and we put in some really good bowling performances to really execute and bowl out Emerging Ireland.”
Young said he had seen massive improvement from the players and a few had progressed to the senior West Indies team, and it showed “the boys are really doing well for themselves, and once they continue along this path, they will be a lot of guys moving into the senior team at some point”.
The two sides were using the series to gain high-quality playing time and test themselves against each other.
The CWI Academy squad, which also won the preceding One-day series 2-1, comprised mainly of the players in the CWI high performance programme with some first-class experience, and others that have graduated from the Under-19 level with some distinction.
CMC
