COOLIDGE, Antigua, CMC – Cricket West Indies Academy captain Nyeem Young hailed his side for their success in sweeping their four-day, first-class series against Emerging Ireland 2-0.
The CWI Academy wrapped up the series success with a 432-run win in the second match inside three days on Monday at the Coolidge Cricket Ground, where they also won the first match by an innings and 134 runs.
“I’m thrilled, as a captain, to win this series convincingly,” Young told CWI Media. “The boys have performed excellently throughout the series, and there were some excellent individual performances.
“Many guys put their hands up in different situations that have led us to this series, so I am pleased about how we went about it, and I am looking forward to the (West Indies Championship) in February.”
Academy batsman struck three hundred in the series – left-hander Joshua Bishop, batting at eight, made 102 not out in the first match. In the second match, Kevlon Anderson and Kevin Wickham followed up with 125 and 105, respectively, not off.
None of the CWI Academy bowlers could take five wickets in an innings, but teenage pacer Isai Thorne bowled the most impressive of the lot in the second innings of the first match to end with four for eight.
Young said it was an excellent all-round effort from the squad and built on the team’s performances from the Headley-Weekes Tri-Series earlier in the year and the West Indies Super50 Cup.
“We played some four-day games earlier in the year – the Headley-Weekes games – and we had some KPIs (key performance indicators) for those games in terms of how we wanted to go about our game and what was necessary for us when we got ourselves into position, how to win games,” he said.
“We took much of that into this series, and many guys raised their hands. It was perfect to see batters scoring hundreds and people playing some good parts throughout the game with contributions like 50s and some good partnerships.
“We scored some perfect scores throughout the games and put in some outstanding bowling performances to execute and bowl out Emerging Ireland.”
Young said he had seen massive improvement from the players, and a few had progressed to the senior West Indies team. It showed that “the boys are doing well for themselves, and once they continue along this path, there will be a lot of guys moving into the senior team at some point.”
The two sides used the series to gain high-quality playing time and test themselves against each other.
The CWI Academy squad, which also won the preceding one-day series 2-1, was comprised mainly of the CWI high-performance program players with some first-class experience and others who graduated from the under-19 level with some distinction.
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