Joshua’s Great Expectations to succeed on tour of England

To be called for a West Indian touring team to England at 21 years old is a most exhilarating feeling for Joshua Da Silva: “I had given myself three years to reach my dream of playing for the West Indies, when I was told by coach Roger Harper that I had been selected to be amongst the 10 reserves in addition to the 15 selected ones for England, it came as a real surprise,” says young “Josh” as he is referred to, told the North Zone Website. 

The member of the Queen’s Park Cricket Club premiership team and the Trinidad and Tobago X1 says he is “quite comfortable with the selection and intend, now that I have been selected, to stay in the team.”  He made out to the North Zone Website that he is not overawed by the prospect of facing a new ball England attack comprising the likes of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, who between them have over 1000 Test wickets.

“I do not watch and play cricket by name, I am backing my skills against any bowler,” says Josh with a boldness that we may all hope results in runs; plenty of them.   He favours very much the second string in his bow, wicket keeping.  This is even though, as I pointed out to him and he recognised, there are a number of wicket-keeper batsmen in the West Indies line-up starting with the incumbent in Test cricket, Shane Dowrich, Shai Hope and Nicholas Pooran who can be competition to get into the team because of their strong batting credentials. 

“I will not let go of my keeping,” says Josh obviously favouring standing behind the wickets and the opportunity it gives the keeper to have a full and close up view of all that is happening.  Josh has batted from the opening slot right down to number eight in the order.  He says he will take on whatever position required of him and in the best interest of the team. 

Big question for Josh to answer even at this early point in his career: What kind of batsman is he in the West Indian tradition that spans Larry Gomes and Shivnarine Chanderpaul on the one side and the attacking, attractive stroke players of the Richards, Lara type (of course we are not making any equation with him and those extraordinary world champions, just in style) where does he fit?

“I am the stroke-playing type,” he says but makes the point that he bats responsibly and in keeping with the needs of his team.  As to which side of the wicket he favours, Josh says driving through the covers is what he prefers.  However, in true West Indian form, he says he will not let the opportunity to get runs on the leg-side escape him.

He hooks and pulls but understands that there are times when “as a batsman you have to get out of the way of the short-pitched deliveries as you may not be in the ideal position to play the hook and pull shots, which are high-risk shots at the best of times.” 

“I have great respect for the game and I seek to bat responsibly,” says the young batsman who I could feel across the Zoom interview technology is itching to get on the field. 

Josh is very much aware of what has been seen by many, this writer included, as the major and widespread weakness of West Indian batsmen, the shot-makers: so eager are they to score quickly and attractively that impatience and poor judgment, which ball to hit and which to defend, take possession of them.  Invariably many of them surrender their wickets rather than stay at the crease beyond exciting 40s and 50s to make large hundreds. 

Josh says he has received good counseling from videotapes on the mental side of the game.  He likes playing long innings with his QPCC and Trinidad and Tobago batting partner, Darren Bravo. He is sorry that Darren will not be on the trip to England, “as we usually have long partnerships together.”

Darren refused the invitation to be in England with the team.  “Once I spoke with the team management and the authorities and they assured me of the protocols I was ready,” says Josh.  And while going to England is of great significance to any young cricketer, it’s not the first time that he will be there as he played a full season with a minor league  touring team   and knows something of the conditions to be faced.  He says the swing and movement off the pitch does not faze him.

Going back to where it all started for him at St. Mary’s, he was far more in love with football and the thought of representing the school with a long track record at the “Beautiful Game” and playing the game professionally.    Here is where Andre Lawrence, former player and now coach intervened.

Batting talent spotted

“I saw him hitting the cricket ball off the wall in football clothes.  So after he was done I went and asked him why he was not coming to cricket practice, Andre being the Under 17 and 19 cricket coach – Andre being a former T&T national player.   He said he would come after the football season ended, and he did come and that is when the relationship started. I met his parents and I began coaching and interacting with Josh,” Andre told the North Zone Website. 

For Josh, while he liked football, he understood the need to focus on cricket and to avoid the possibilities of a football injury.  At school in St. Mary’s the option of playing both games at the expense of his studies was taken away from him.  He chose cricket. 

Andre notes it was a time when St. Mary’s the cricket school of Brian and Charlie Davis, Clifford Roach before them, Bernard Julien, Richard De Souza, Richard Gabriel, the Aleong brothers, had been in serious decline and needed a player who would lead a return.

Joshua Da Silva turned out to be the young player who would guide the College back.  The team got promoted after a long time in the lower division.   Another significant experience which marked the coming of Josh was a private tour of young West Indian players in the making to New Zealand. The tour was organised and managed by Bruce Aanensen and Tony Harford with Andre as the coach.  

After being beaten very badly in the first match in the land of the Kiwis by the Kiwis, a game in which Josh batted well at number eight, the coach made changes and placed Josh to open the innings “because of his technique to face the swinging ball,” says Andre.  Josh not only scored heavily, inclusive of a century, but led the way back; the team won the other eight games played on tour. 

Back home, Joshua became a fixture in the Under 17 and 19 North Zone teams.  Here too, Josh engineered victories for his team to win titles in the zonal tournament.

Foundation in North Zone 

“North Zone was the stepping stone for me; it was everything. It provided me with the opportunity to develop my skills and play against very talented young players,” Josh told the NZ Website.  The North Zone also provided an opportunity for Josh to learn and practice leadership skills.

Josh says his 196 for St. Mary’s against QRC as the great innings of his college cricket and his 113 in a four-day game for Trinidad and Tobago against Jamaica, and 103 in a 50-over game for the West Indies Emerging team on a tricky wicket at the Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba were his outstanding performances, so far.    

After school, Josh played in the TTCB National League for Queens Park, first for the “B” team and then for the “A” team in the Premiership. “It was from there that I was propelled into the Trinidad and Tobago National Team and ultimately into Trials for the West Indies,” says Josh.

On this score, he has a good word for the North Zone being a tournament and league to which young players must aspire.  “Young players playing in the Zone will get an opportunity to play against very talented players and an opportunity to grow and develop their game,” says Josh.  

Josh follows West Indian players such as Brian Lara, Ian Bishop, the Bravo brothers, Keiron Pollard and a number of others who had their groundings in the North Zone.   They went on to distinguish themselves in West Indies and international cricket.  

Josh also recognises his cricket “founder”  – in a manner of speaking, and first coach, Andre Lawrence for the initial coaching and guidance he received from him.  Reciprocating the togetherness of the two, Lawrence says he sees much of himself in young Josh both on and off the field.

Test Cricket provides the “Masters of the Art”

Great news for West Indies cricket is the fact of Josh favouring playing Test cricket, the ultimate challenge, he says.  “When you succeed at Test cricket you can do so in the white ball forms of the game,” says Josh.  This is surely a departure from what most young players are going for in the T20 and ODIs, quick and dynamic action in front of large party crowds and with hefty salary packages made in quick time.  Test cricket Josh says is for the “masters of the art and the Test legends”: we have to presume that is where he wants to be. 

Of real importance is the support that Josh has received from his parents (Michael and Caroline) and sister, Danielle, the latter a fitness trainer who introduced Josh to the rigours of staying fit.   Daily seven-mile runs in preparation for going to England are amongst the exercise routines he adopted before going off.

But we almost lost Josh like we did Jofra Archer, the fast bowler from Barbados who has become the spearhead of the English attack on hard and fast pitches. Having played some cricket in Canada, where his parents lived for a while, Josh was offered contracts to play in the far north and this was before he was selected for the West Indies.

“I politely turned down the offer, but I said in my off-time I may be able to play in Canada,” says Josh.   Josh is grateful that even at this early stage of his career, he has received an equipment contract from  Adidas; such international companies do not invest their resources and name in “junk bonds.”

“Jumped in with two feet”

Was it a difficult decision for Josh to accept the offer to tour with the West Indies to England in these times of Covid-19, the U.K. having quite an epidemic of its own?  “When Roger Harper (the chairman of selectors) called and told me I had been selected, I took the opportunity with both feet forward,” Josh told the North Zone Website.

Notwithstanding the outstanding nature of Australia and India in the world of cricket today, England, the former colonial masters, remain the pinnacle of the ambitions of many a young player and the challenge for any West Indian team. 

There will be no games played at the home of cricket internationally, Lords on this tour, but Josh is intent into the future to make his mark where many West Indian batsmen and bowlers are listed on the walls of the Long Room.  

Let’s give our full support to the most recent of many T&T and West Indian players as Joshua Da Silva plays his first innings as a West Indian player.  May the gods smile on you Josh … from Andre, chairman of the North Zone Winston Sobers and all of Trinidad and Tobago.