The Demerara Cricket Club (DCC) has always been one of the leading clubs in Guyana when it comes to producing talented young cricketers. Over the years a number of these players have gone on to represent Guyana and the West Indies.
Today, the The Demerara Cricket Club continues to have a very vibrant and thriving youth programme. Headed by coach Garvin Nedd, the programme continues to produce a number of very talented youngsters who have graduated to the Guyana and West Indies under-15, under-17, under-19 and senior teams. Tevin Imlaac and Kemo Paul are two graduates from the programme who represented the West Indies at the 2016 under-19 World Cup and were very instrumental in them winning that tournament. More recently Ashmead Nedd represented the West Indies at the 2017/18 under-19 World Cup in New Zealand.
Paul along with another graduate of the programme, Sherfene Rutherford, wore the Guyana colours at the senior level in both the first-class and limited-overs formats, making their debuts in the 2017 regional four day competition. Paul turned in a man-of-the match performance in a victory against the Leeward Islands, in only his third game at this level. This was part of a very successful 2017/18 regional first-class season culminating in selection to the West Indies A team against England Lions and subsequently the West Indies senior team for the World Cup qualifiers in Zimbabwe. Rutherford also had a fairly successful 2017/18 regional First Class season, which resulted in him being bought by the Guyana Amazon Warriors for the upcoming 2018 CPL T20 tournament.
For 2018, DCC created history by having completed a three peat in youth cricket at the Under 15, 17 & 19 levels and is also well placed in the Under-13 competition, which has been halted by inclement weather. As the club continues to churn out new talent some of the names ear-marked to be on the national scene for 2019 are Nkosi Beaton (batting allrounder), Daniel Mootoo (left arm spinner), Garrick Persaud (wicketkeeper) and Jonaton Vanlange (batsman).
Praise must be given to Coach Nedd for doing a superb job with the resources at his disposal; resources the DCC Trust Fund endeavours to enhance. One of the main objectives of Fund is to provide support, financially and otherwise for the Youth Programme in order to ensure that it remains vibrant and keeps producing quality players who are equipped with the technical and mental skills to enable them to be successful at the national and international levels. The inclusion of Roger Harper, Mark Harper and Travis Dowlin to the coaching programme is a huge plus and is expected to have a positive impact in helping to improve the skill set of and producing more outstanding players for the future.
