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By Peter Della Penna

USA U-19 captain Abhijit Joshi and vice-captain Steven Taylor recently traveled to St. Kitts to take part in the first ICC Americas Academy camp. Both players spent the first 10 days of March participating in a full day of cricket activities to enrich and enhance their skills for the future.

“I had a great time there and I learned a lot,” said Joshi. “All the coaches were high performance coaches and all certified Level 3 or Level 4 coaches from the ECB.” The camp was organized and led by ICC Americas Performance Officer Andy Pick. Other coaches that were there included Argentina coach Toby Bailey, Chris Brown and John Abraham from England and Dr. David Scott, a sports psychologist from the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens.

“We started in the morning at 8 o’clock,” said Joshi. “We had a psychology session in the mornings. After that we’d go to the ground and do a little bit of fitness with fielding. The fielding drills were great. They were very unique. We’d do that until 11. Then we’d have a specialist session. If we were batsman we’d go with the batting coach. If we were spinners we’d go with the spin coach. Then after lunch we would have match scenarios which would last the whole day until 5.”

Joshi had positive things to say about all the coaches, but felt that being drilled on match scenarios was particularly helpful to his development over the course of the 10 days.

Image (right) : USA U-19 captain Abhijit Joshi. [Courtesy - Peter Della Penna/DreamCricket]

“We did so many match scenarios,” said Joshi. “We had middle overs, so getting about 40 runs in eight overs. Then we would only play spinners and have to rotate the strike, batting with tailenders, stuff like that. It was set up like a match scenario so I think that was the most beneficial part of the camp.”

“The first day we had a test and the last day we had a test to show us how much we had improved. It was like a skills test for batting. For example, being able to place balls into gaps, the coaches would mark it down on a notepad.”

In addition to Joshi and Taylor, two players were selected from Canada, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Argentina, Bahamas and Suriname as well as two players from St. Kitts and Nevis. Some of the notable participants were current Canada U-19 player Manny Aulakh and former Canada U-19 captain Rustam Bhatti, former Argentina U-19 captain Alejo Tissera, and Bermuda national team players Rodney Trott and Malachi Jones.

The camp is something Joshi hopes will become an annual experience.