Warwick faces tough start to league season

FRIDAY, MAY 4: I am looking forward to league kicking off this weekend and the fact that it’s doing so early shows the Board has got it right.

Warwick plays Cleveland in a Twenty20 match on Saturday at Rangers and then we play St George’s at Wellington Oval on Sunday in the 50 overs League.

These are two big games for us to start off with.

Even though Warwick has a lot of junior players, the senior players should be able to handle the format change from one day to the next, but it’s going to be tougher for the youngsters switching from Twenty20 to 50 overs.

Twenty20 is a fast paced game and the longer version requires more patience.

The younger the players are, the more difficult it will be for them to make the transition — it’s mainly about mindset.

Cleveland earned promotion this year and they will be looking to stamp their authority early in the season, which, unfortunately, is against us.

We are the so-called whipping boys of cricket in Bermuda.

Hopefully, they will be over-confident and we can catch them off guard. And have a good competition with them.

We are the youngest team in the league and they’ll be coming out with good experienced players looking for a solid win to start off their campaign.

On Sunday, we’ll face a St George’s team which has lost a lot of players this year so they won’t be as strong as they were last year.

But they have a strong tradition and they picked up a couple of good senior players in Herbie Bascome and Glenn Blakeney.

On top of that, St George’s will be wanting to prove a point that it doesn’t matter who leaves, they can still compete.

They’ll be looking to take maximum points off of us because of our youth.

Last year Warwick only ended up one point out of 200 so every game we’ll be looking to get a couple of points off of every team — that will be progress.

Tony Hemming from the ICC was in this week to work with our groundsman and to take a look at our pitches.

It should come as no surprise that he recommended all our pitches need replacing.