NAGICO-LICA Cricket One Day Tournament
John Eugene Grateful for NAGICO'S Support to LICA One Day Tournament.
By Rawle Nelson
In Photo seated left to right: NAGICO's Marketing Manager, Jasmine Payne; NAGICO's Managing Director, Mr. Eric Ellis; President of LICA, Mr. Gregory Shillingford and President of the St. Kitts Cricket Association, Mr. Ingleton Liburd.
Captain of the St Maarten Cricket team, John Eugene has commended National Insurance Company (NAGICO) for their support to the development of cricket in the Leeward Islands. Eugene who was a former Windward Islands player said that he hopes that other companies will emulate the contributions being made by NAGICO.
"NAGICO is demonstrating what being a good corporate citizen entails and I trust that other companies will come on board, whatever they can give to assist in the development of the sport will certainly go a very long way and we need support," he said.
Eugene said that he is satisfied with the development that is taking place in many of the teams noting that through the provision of sponsorship by NAGICO a number of teams are getting better and better with each tournament.
The tournament has eight teams in this year's tournament playing in two zone s with the top two teams of each zone facing off in the semi finals. Both semi finals and finals will be played in St Maarten with the winner taking home the championship trophy and $5,000.00 EC.
"I can tell you that through the staging of the NAGICO One Day Tournament there continues to be a lot of improvements, especially with the ground fielding and batting" said Eugene, who was one of thirty two players called up for trials to play in the Stanford All Stars squad.
He pointed to "a lot of poor batting shots, poor running between the wickets and some inconsistent bowling but many of the teams have succeeded in working in those areas thus resulting in the level of game being lifted. I am however satisfied that we have seen a lot more commitment from the players".
Explaining the reasons for several of the poor batting display which have seen his team, St Maarten losing four of their five matches thus far in the competition, Eugene stated; "A lot of the guys continues to fail to stick to the team's game plans and allows themselves to be drawn into plying unnecessary shots thus the reason for our very low scores that we have made in all of our games.
But apart from that, and maybe a bit more application running between the wickets, I think the tournament so far is a very successful one ... one of a very high standard and can only get better," said Eugene.
"One of my despite is to see the guys on our team (St Maarten) would continue to do well thus seeing us winning this championship as it is very important to us. Another desire is to see the standard within the Leeward Islands improving which will evolve into more players from the Leeward Islands making it ultimately into the West Indies Cricket team," he noted.
We just hope the players can continue to rise and continue to play to their full potential and go from strength to strength," added Eugene who disclosed that he has no plans of making in into the West Indies Cricket team at this age. "I am past that stage and for me now I play because of fun so I will continue to play in the LICA competition until I think its time for me to rest my bat," he said.
The St Maarten captain also identified a few talents, but refused to single out any particular player. He only said: "There are a number of players who have performed well, some known ones and a few young players, so overall the standard is pretty high"
Eugene stressed that Mc Sood Amjad of NAGICO should be recognized for his sterling and significant contributions to the development of cricket within the Leeward Islands noting that NAGICO's assistance has assisted the local associations in providing an avenue for their players to have fun and compete while developing their talent as well.
In the end I strongly believe that through development of players from the Leeward Islands it will result in overall development of West Indies cricket. This, he said is important and alluded to the fact that NAGICO is playing its fair share urging other corporate companies to follow suit.
"When you look at the people who turned up to watch the matches, there are a lot of youngsters and kids, who are now developing an interest in the game," he said. "A lot of female"