A two-week training camp with the Super Kings academy saw the batters play a variety of spin bowlers, practice on red and black-soil pitches, and also play few games against top locals
Deivarayan Muthu12-Dec-2024While West Indies’ senior players were engaging in a home series against Bangladesh, their next-in-line batters were undergoing a two-week training program thousands of miles away in Chennai. Jewel Andrew, the breakout star of CPL 2024, Kirk McKenzie, who made his Test debut against India last year, Ackeem Auguste, Jordan Johnson, Matthew Nandu, Kevin Wickham and Teddy Bishop all trained at the Super Kings academy, with West Indies academy head coach Ramesh Subasinghe and West Indies Under-19 coach Rohan Nurse and Super Kings academy coach Sriram Krishnamurthy overseeing their progress.After receiving positive feedback from Rachin Ravindra and Ben Sears, who had trained in Chennai in the lead-up to New Zealand’s Test series in India which the Black Caps won 3-0, West Indies decided to send their emerging talent for a camp, where they were exposed to red-and-black-soil pitches and every variety of spin, including wristspin and mystery spin.This was the first time the West Indies Academy players were exposed to overseas training, and it seems to have served them well. On Monday, Andrew, McKenzie, Wickham, Auguste all rolled out a variety of sweeps at training, including the slog-sweep and reverse. On Tuesday they implemented some of it during a 50-over one-day game on a slow pitch. As part of the camp, West Indies’ batters play one two-day game and three one-day matches in Chennai and CSK have made these matches more competitive by calling up some Tamil Nadu players, including Hong Kong-born ambidextrous wristspinner Jhathavedh Subramanyan, who was part of Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2024.For 21-year-old Auguste, this camp was the next step in his development after having won the CPL earlier this year with St Lucia Kings under Faf du Plessis and Daren Sammy.”It’s been good so far in Chennai, trying to adapt to new surfaces and incorporate into my game,” Auguste says. “I think for both black and red clay, you need to come up with a game plan and try to stick to it as much as possible. Naturally, I sweep, so it comes naturally to me here too. So, just deciding on which sweep I’d want to play – a paddle sweep, reverse sweep or just a hard conventional sweep.”Auguste was the standout batter in the two-day match, scoring a pair of eighties amid inhospitable humidity, but he was disappointed not to score a big hundred.Kevin Wickham brings out the sweep•Super Kings Academy”I would have liked to at least convert one or if not both, but I think just taking in whatever we did in practice and just trying to incorporate it into the game and just sticking to a game plan for as long as possible, I felt like that worked out pretty well for me on the day,” Auguste says. “But I think I should have probably tried to convert one, but if I was told I would have gotten these scores, then I would take it.”McKenzie, 24, isn’t a natural sweeper like Auguste, but has been honing the shot to disrupt spin. “I’ve been sweeping a bit more and trying to use the depth of the crease a bit more,” McKenzie says. “I’m here for the first time in India, so I’m trying to broaden my game and get used to the different surfaces here. The ball turns more in the subcontinent and there’s also uneven bounce. So, probably in the future, if I have a Test tour here, this will be beneficial coming here.”
“We don’t have a proper development program in the Caribbean and not a lot of facilities as well for a proud nation that has won six ICC championships, including an Under-19 World Cup. We don’t have a state-of-the-art high-performance facility, so we need to be innovative with our approach and this camp in Chennai was one way of doing it.”West Indies academy head coach Subasinghe
McKenzie grew up idolising fellow Jamaican Chris Gayle and made his Test debut, against India, in Port-of-Spain in July 2023, after having played just nine first-class games at the time. He showed promise with 32 against India and then bettered it with 50 in his next Test in Adelaide. McKenzie, however, had a harrowing experience in England, managing just 33 in six innings. How does he deal with the ups and downs of playing international cricket?”I’m just trying to stay level as possible,” McKenzie says. “Not trying to get too high or too low. I think that’s very important because you can score a hundred today and score a duck tomorrow. I’m just trying to stay level at all times.”Subasinghe, who has also worked with New Zealand’s emerging players, reckons that greater exposure such as this stint in Chennai will ensure that McKenzie is better equipped to cope with the pressure of international cricket.”Sometimes people do get picked for international teams – like especially in a country like West Indies where we don’t have a big player pool compared to somewhere like India – when they aren’t ready,” Subasinghe says. “I’m not saying Kirk wasn’t ready but then Kirk was a very young player, so he’s still learning the game and finding his feet in first-class cricket.West Indies’ emerging players train at the Super Kings Academy indoor nets•Super Kings Academy”So to handle the expectations I would always like to think about individual development; he’s learned good lessons but then it’s important for him to reflect better on what has happened and put plans in place to improve. So by the next time when he comes back to the international set-up, which I know he will, he will have more tools and a bit more experiences like these to call upon him.”With West Indies not playing too many ‘A’ team tournaments, and lacking a robust player-development structure at the level below international cricket, Subasinghe sees this Chennai camp as a “creative” way to nurture their emerging players.”Coach Sri (Sriram) has been influential on the boys who are getting different voices, which they can absorb and then find their own methods,” Subasinghe says. “For a smaller, financially constrained association, we need to be creative. We’ve also brought in the Under-19 coach (Nurse) who can go back and then share the information to the other young players in the Caribbean.”We don’t have a proper development program in the Caribbean and not a lot of facilities as well for a proud nation that has won six ICC championships, including an Under-19 World Cup. We don’t have a state-of-the-art high-performance facility, so we need to be innovative with our approach and this camp in Chennai was one way of doing it. It’s very hard to get pathway international tournaments and mainly the big boards play against the other big boards. So for us, it’s about identifying the targeted players and then exposing them to different learning environments in a creative way, which we are trying to do.”