More cup competitions are good for cricket

FRIDAY, MAY 25: The Bermuda Cricket Board has to be commended for giving the teams and players more trophies to play for this season.

The Knock Out Cup is back in and they’ve started a new competition featuring all-star teams from the three counties and a combined St George’s and Somerset Cup Match team.

The new cup is called The Regional.

The players who are not picked for the three county teams will be eligible to play for the combined Cup Match team, which should be interesting as they will have something to prove.

This will be good for Warwick’s young players as they will get to play against high-class competition as part of The Regional.

This will create pressure situations in which they can learn from. They will be able to advance in their skills by being able to participate.

I’m not going to play in The Regional as it will allow a youngster a chance to get some experience, plus I will be able to use that time to spend with my family.

There will be three or four players from each club team to form the county sides, which is good because it will allow for more players to get developed.

For the younger players, it means they’ll get a chance to play against the national squad players — whenever you can create an opportunity to play higher calibre cricket, that can only benefit all involved.

This is going to be a step up for the younger players.

Confidence

We’ve picked up a couple of wins already this season at Warwick so we’ve had to readjust our goals.

This has been a very good start for us.

Initially, we were going to be happy with a couple of victories, but because we have achieved it so early in the season we have a new target — to be competitive in all our matches.

It is something that is achievable and the young team that Warwick has is starting to believe that they are capable of achieving this.

The senior players still have a role to play in leading by example, but there is a noticeable difference in the attitude of the young players — what a difference maker in confidence it is getting a couple of wins under our belts.

The morale is high as we wanted them to know what it’s like to win after last season.

They are coming to training and giving their all because of this. They are talking about being successful instead of just showing up.

This is just the first month of the season, but they’ve caught on and they now know what it is like to compete.

This is just fast-tracked our long-term programme. We now have to push ourselves to go further.