Anthony Foster, Freelance Writer
NATIONAL UNDER-19 women's coach, Cleon Smith, believes his young charges will give a good account of themselves when the first Caribbean championships get under way on Saturday.
The inaugural competition is set to bowl off on Saturday with Jamaica facing the President's XI team at Port Esquivel Sports Club, Old Harbour Road, St. Catherine.
The Jamaica team, which has most of its players coming out of the prep school system, is young. But, according to Smith, they should be able to compete with the likes of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago who boast nine and six players respectively from their senior teams.
"It will be hard (to win), but not impossible," Smith said. "When a team is successful you never have more than three or four people performing on the day, so if we can get at least four people performing in all areas, we can create some upset," he said.
"We have an all-round team. We don't have a team that dominates any specific area," he said. "We have a balanced team, we can get batting from the bowlers and bowling from the batters.
A big ask
"When it comes to winning the tournament, that is a big ask. The pressure will be on a few players who have the experience in playing at the senior level. A lot of pressure will be on them.
"It will be hard to win the competition, but not impossible because cricket is played on the field, on the day."
Stafanie Taylor who, along with Jodian Morgan and Shanel Daley represented Jamaica in the Senior West Indies women's cricket tournament in St. Lucia earlier this year - and Rashana Outar, who played for Jamaica in the Under-23 tournament last year, are the hosts' top players.
In a practice match played on Saturday against Hamilton Gardens Under-15 team, the Jamaica female team came away victors by 62 runs.
Taylor, 74, and Keneshia Ferron, 33, put on 70 runs for the first wicket to set the pace for the young women against the boys.
Morgan (35) and Claudine Beckford (25 not out) supported with useful scores in the team's total of 209-4 off 40 overs.
In Hamilton Gardens' turn at bat, Taylor bagged 4-15, Outar 2-29 and Abbie-Gaye Hendricks 2-27.
Hamilton made 147 all out as only Chevor Kennedy (33) put up any resistance.
Despite the victory, coach Smith saw room for improvement.
"We are still not as disciplined as we want to be," he said of the bowling. "We are not getting the line right because they have difficulty controlling the movement with the breeze, but I think this week we can do much better than that," he said.
