Sealy: Let’s show we belong at this level

By Cayman Sports Buzz
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Updated: 5 September 2017

Cayman Islands National Cricket Team at ICC WCL Div 5 tournament.

After two losses at the ICC World Cricket League Division 5 tournament in South Africa, Cayman Islands captain Ramon Sealy is eager to put those defeats behind him and rally the team for its final group match against Italy on Wednesday, 6 September.

Cayman faces Italy at Willowmoore Park in Benoni for the 50-over affair. “Italy is considered one of the top teams here. So, I want to go out there and beat them and show that we belong at this level but it just didn’t work out in the first two games,” Sealy said in an interview with CaymanSportsBuzz.com.

The going has been particularly rough, falling by 93 runs to Qatar on Sunday then losing by six wickets to Guernsey a day later. However, Sealy said in addition to quality competition, the Cayman team had itself to blame for the some of the struggles.

Ramon Sealy (file photo)

Reflecting on the Qatar match, Sealy said it could have all gone very differently if there were not mishaps in the field.

“We had them in a good position then we had a few let downs in the field, where we started to misfield, we had some dropped catches and that allowed the two guys who scored the runs for them to get those runs. If we had held those chances, it probably would have been a completely different game,” he said.

“With them scoring that much, we then put a lot more pressure on our batsmen to score a lot more quickly and then it didn’t work out. We still managed to get 250, which is a good achievement because it’s not often that you hear teams from Cayman scoring over 200 but it’s not enough, in my opinion.”

Then this was his assessment of the Guernsey defeat: “We started off well but we lost some wickets that put the team on the back foot. We did well to recover to get to 214 but it was about 40-50 runs too short and we weren’t able to put enough pressure on them. Then when we were bowling, we weren’t able to hold our lines and keep the pressure on for them to have to force a shot.”

There have been some batting bright spots for the team. Conroy Wright his 74 not out off 63 balls versus Qatar, while Omar Willis contributed a half-century (51). Opener Sacha De Alwis has helped lay the platform for the innings with scores of 32 and 60.

After lasting a solitary ball in the middle during the opener against Qatar, the skipper bounced back with 36 against Guernsey, sharing an important 73-run second wicket partnership with De Alwis.

“It was good. I wish I could have gone on a bit more and done more for the team but it was nice for me to score some runs and have an influence on the game – a bigger influence than I did the previous day. Hopefully, I can take that form into the next game and score a bit more runs,” Sealy said.

He added that the team is eager to not go without a win in the group stage, having missed out on any shot at promotion to ICC World Cricket League Division 4 next year. “I’m confident in our abilities, so hopefully we can go out there and show that with a win and see where we go from there.”

After the Italy game, Cayman will play another regardless of the result. That game will determine their final standing in the eight-team tournament.

Results in brief of earlier matches:

3 September: Qatar beat Cayman Islands by 93 runs

Qatar 343-7, 50 overs (Dharmang Patel 93, Khurram Shahzad 93; Troy Taylor 2-60, Ricardo Roach 1-7)

Cayman Islands 250-8, 50 overs (Conroy Wright 74 not out, Omar Willis 51; Imran Ashraf 2-27, Iqbal Hussain 1-22)

4 September: Guernsey beat Cayman Islands by six wickets

Cayman Islands 214-9, 50 overs (Sacha De Alwis 60, Ramon Sealy 36, Ryan Bovell 28; David Hooper 5-36)

Guernsey 216-4, 36.3 overs (Josh Butler 93, Oliver Newey 54, Matthew Stokes 31; Conroy Wright 1-25, Alessandro Morris 1-37)