West Indies Cricket Fans Forum
Sobers: Hetmyer will be next Windies great
THE legendary Sir Garfield Sobers says that Shimron Hetmyer will be the next great West Indies player. Sobers made the comment at a function called an ‘Evening with Sir Gary’ at the Barbados national museum.
Sobers said: “I like how this boy plays and he will be the next great batsman for the West Indies.”
Hours after this comment was made, Hetmyer celebrated by scoring an unbeaten 104 against England in the second match of the Colonial Medical Insurance Cup at Kensington Oval in Barbados.
The Guyanese thrilled the crowd including Sir Gary as he took apart the English attack, taking the Windies to 289 for six off their 50 overs.
He struck 104 not out off 83 balls with seven fours and four sixes. Hetmyer got his first half-century off 47 balls and completed his second off a further 35 balls.
Such was the brute force of his display; he scored 97 runs in front of the wicket and only seven behind. He was particularly strong down the ground hitting 42 runs in the arc between mid-off and mid-on.
Born in Berbice, Guyana, Hetmyer is a World Cup winning captain of the West Indies Under-19 team of 2016. Inspired by his father Seon Hetmyer, Shimron picked up the bat at a tender age of 11. Since then he has never looked back. His initial apprenticeship started off at the Young Warriors Cricket Club in Berbice.
He represented West Indies at the Under-19 World Cup in 2014 as well but managed three single digit scores out of the five games that he played in that tourney. Even his first-class debut was far from memorable as he managed scores of zero and four in both innings against T&T.
However, destiny gave him a second chance and this time he was meant to marshal the troops in the Under-19 World Cup and he responded with crucial fifties in the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the 2016 edition en route to the silverware.
In just 22 ODI matches, Hetmyer has struck four centuries and two half-centuries with a healthy average of 42.18 and a strike rate of 109.9. (Extracted from Trinidad and Tobago Guardian)
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Guyana Diaspora Forum
We have a large database of Guyanese worldwide. Most of our readers are in the USA, Canada, and the UK. Our Blog and Newsletter would not only carry articles and videos on Guyana, but also other articles on a wide range of subjects that may be of interest to our readers in over 200 countries, many of them non-Guyanese We hope that you like our selections.
It is estimated that over one million Guyanese, when counting their dependents, live outside of Guyana. This exceeds the population of Guyana, which is now about 750,000. Many left early in the 50’s and 60’s while others went with the next wave in the 70’s and 80’s. The latest wave left over the last 20 years. This outflow of Guyanese, therefore, covers some three generations. This outflow still continues today, where over 80 % of U.G. graduates now leave after graduating. We hope this changes, and soon.
Guyanese, like most others, try to keep their culture and pass it on to their children and grandchildren. The problem has been that many Guyanese have not looked back, or if they did it was only fleetingly. This means that the younger generations and those who left at an early age know very little about Guyana since many have not visited the country. Also, if they do get information about Guyana, it is usually negative and thus the cycle of non-interest is cultivated.
This Guyana Diaspora Online Forum , along with its monthly newsletter, aims at bringing Guyanese together to support positive news, increase travel and tourism in Guyana and, in general, foster the birth of a new Guyana, which has already begun notwithstanding the negative news that grabs the headlines. As the editor and manager of the publication, I am committed to delivering Blog entries and Newsletters that are politically balanced, and focused on the positive ideas we wish to share and foster among Guyanese.
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