Garamuts prospects facing scheduling clash with school, training

PAPUA New Guinea Under-19 cricket head coach Jack Vare-Kevere says potential Garamuts players who are students from centres outside Port Moresby pose a challenge for Cricket PNG.
Kevere said a couple of players from Milne Bay and Morobe were selected in the train-on-squad but with the school year in progress, having the players based in Port Moresby for the five-week long selection trials was a challenge.
“The toughest part is we’ve got these kids in school and we encourage all parents and kids to prioritise school first, cricket can come second,” Kevere told The National.
“In this situation we’ve got two kids who are in school, they were in the cut (for selection). We are planning to have them next week, they’ll be arriving next week (this week) and then we’ll have them go through the same process for trial and selection.
“We’ve also got one player who’s based in Australia, he was part of the last U19 team but because of studies as he was doing year 11.
“He’s now part of this group, he’s doing his own training with all the programme so he’s doing his training with a club.”
Meanwhile, Kevere said his plans for the team was to have them play ideally longer matches on an average of 85-90 overs.
“So far we’ve covered the 70-over mark in both weekends (of the selection trials),” said Kevere.
“In the first weekend, both teams were dismissed in the 30 over mark but yesterday (Sunday) we saw improvements in one team batting out their allotted 50-overs and the other team was dismissed in the 20 over mark.
“We’ve covered a lot of physical, tactical and technical components in the last two weeks and so far I’m happy with how things are but there’s still heaps of room to improve.”