By Akeem Greene
Nineteen-year-old Guyanese cricketer Ashmead Nedd is one of three West Indian Under-19 players from this year’s Youth World Cup squad to be drafted by a franchise for the 2020-2021 Regional season and the accomplishment brought tears of joy from his father, Garvin Nedd.
Garvin played 14 First-Class matches for Guyana and is now a coach at the Demerara Cricket Club, the foundation from which his son developed into the promising talent, and now drafted by the Leeward Islands Hurricanes.
The Nedds are opposites in their style of play; the senior was a classical off-spinner who took 29 wickets for Guyana, while his son is a left-arm orthodox spinner, who has played six List A matches for West Indies Emerging Players with great success.
“He (father Garvin) is proud; he’s one of the persons behind my career, he is very proud of my accomplishments knowing that I will get to be a professional. He has always been talking to me about what professionalism is like; he is very proud and overjoyed, he actually cried,” the player revealed to News Room Sport recently.
At the Cricket West Indies Professional players draft earlier this month, Nedd was one of five Outside Home Territory’ players to be retained or drafted by one of the six franchises.
Usually each franchise is mandated to select two such players, but this year the rule was relaxed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Hurricanes still went after Nedd, which according to him was no big surprise.
“This is a big accomplishment knowing that I will get to go into professional cricket; looking back over the past six months, the Super50, the [Under-19] Tri-Series then into the World Cup, I was always thinking something like this would have happened for me.”
He added, “I had some confidence knowing a team would have picked me up in the draft knowing I was one of the most economical bowlers coming out of the Super50.”
Nedd played a significant role in helping Emerging Players topple Hurricanes in the Regional Super50 final last year in Trinidad.
He had the fourth best economy rates in the tournament, going at 3.27 runs per over and also picked up 11 wickets in six matches.
Assessing his future teammates, Nedd felt there are an exciting bunch of confident players and it is only a matter of time before they all string together winning performances consistently.
“Looking at the fellas they seem a happy bunch and it is just a matter of time everyone clicks. Hopefully we win a championship. Looking at the way the guys played, there is some good talent in the unit.”
Nedd, who played at two Youth World Cups, has shown the capacity to be a miserly customer with the white-ball and indicated he has to learn to now adapt to the red-ball version.
“This is a big step for me; for the past six months I have been playing mostly white-ball cricket and getting a chance to play in the regional four-day tournament will be great because I have not played any red-ball cricket in a while. It will be about assessing different conditions and adapting fast.”
The young lad hopes the time away from family and friends helps him mature as a professional cricketer and an adult.
“I don’t have a problem with that [being away long from family], being a professional, there are sacrifices you have to make. At this young age, this is one of the sacrifices I have to make to better myself, better my cricket, and be more mature.”
