Along the winding Papourie Road, past stilted homes, unlocked front doors, petit chattel roti shops and sport fields, is cricket-loving Barrackpore West Secondary—blue and white, perched and proud. And despite their now-yearly loss of players to other schools, coach Shal Ramkissoon and his players remain unified and confident of their chances in this year’s Secondary School Cricket League.

“What I like about my team is right now we don’t have any star players, or players who made it big. What we have is a unit, and the unit operates really good in that they work in tandem with each other, they help each other on the field,” said Ramkissoon, well-postured in his blue-checkered shirt.

Many of the most talented Barrackpore players from last year’s team transferred to schools such as St. Benedict’s College, Shiva Boys Hindu School, Presentation College and Iere Boys High School, which had a game against Barrackpore canceled because of rain last Tuesday.

“Our team is not like Iere; it have about five or six of the boys from Iere, left here and went there. I don’t have that. I have everybody come here from form one, they play and they work hard and they become what they are today,” said Ramkissoon.

Since becoming the coach in 1984, he said he gets most of his satisfaction from witnessing his players transition from mediocre, awkward form ones to cricketers who perform on and off the field.

He’s trained and nurtured the likes of national players Rajendra Dahnraj, Reshi Bechan, Andy Beharry and Jason Mohammed.

“One of my philosophies in life is, I can give you a fish and feed you for a day, but if I teach you to fish, I could feed you for life. But some of the parents don’t understand that, they does see a little something today, like let we just say the [other] school might say, ‘Come here, I would give you a little cricket bag with gears,’ and they would go for it, but we can’t do that because we don’t have that kind of funding,” said Ramkissoon.

His unwavering confidence in his players is contagious to the players themselves, who focus on future wins rather than past losses, of games or players.

“We have to just fight with the players we have. We have to have confidence in weself,” says Darron Beekah, 18, a form five student and captain of the Barrackpore Secondary School under-19 cricket team.

In his three years as captain, he has watched as the team’s strength fluctuated because of the loss of critical players.

But Beekah said this year’s team features depth on the batting side, and good bowling skill.

He said victory is a possibility when the players bring their best to every game.

“What is most unique about our team is the closeness of the players,” said Beekah. “It’s like a family.”

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