Barrackpore East motivated by 2017 setback says coach

COACH of Barrackpore East Secondary School girls cricket team Anil Lakhan, thanked the school for their support, which proved crucial as the team won the PowerGen Secondary Schools Cricket League Girls Open T20 title, on Friday night.

Barrackpore East defeated 2017 champions St Stephen’s College by 16 runs at Brian Lara Cricket Academy in Tarouba. Batting first, Barrackpore East posted 95 for five before St Stephen’s College were restricted to 79/4.

After the match, Lakhan said his team was motivated to win the title this year after losing in the semifinals last year.

“I must say it is a very ecstatic feeling knowing that last year we lost in the semifinals to the same team and the girls were motivated I must say.

Their work ethic was excellent and hard word definitely pays off,” Lakhan said.

Lakhan said it was a collective effort and he thanked all those involved in preparing the team.

“I must thank my back room (staff), the teachers, Linda Hosein (team manager) who has done a wonderful job and the school as a whole they have been doing a tremendous job in terms of developing women’s cricket. Today is a testimony of the hard work and the commitment that we continue to put into the development of young people.”

In the final, the first 12 overs of each innings must be bowled with an orange ball. In the last eight overs the orange ball is changed for a wind ball with bowlers being allowed to pelt. The orange ball is harder than a wind ball and sometimes scoring runs can be difficult.

Barrackpore East used some of their strong batters in the middle of the innings in order to utilise the wind ball.

“What we did is that we reorganised our batting order so that the stronger players could take advantage of the wind ball, because generally the orange ball is very difficult to get away at the inception of the innings,” Lakhan said.