Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers women’s head coach Robert Samuels is in T&T help­ing lo­cal crick­eters with their bat­ting. The Ja­maican is cur­rent­ly host­ing a camp at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre, Bal­main, Cou­va, that start­ed on Sep­tem­ber 19 and ends on Sep­tem­ber 30.

Samuels ex­plained, dur­ing a ses­sion at­tend­ed by the top lo­cal women’s crick­eters, in­clud­ing se­nior na­tion­al play­ers Lee-Ann Kir­by and Kar­ish­ma Ramharack, what the fo­cus of the camp is.

“It’s ba­si­cal­ly a lot of tech­ni­cal stuff that I am here do­ing,” said the for­mer West In­dies and Ja­maican crick­eter. “From set­up to every sin­gle shot that is be­ing played from the front foot dri­ves, back foot punch­es, cuts, pulls, all of the shots, but I’m just break­ing it down to the bare es­sen­tials, the ba­sics, and then from the ba­sics that we talk.”

In ad­di­tion to learn­ing how to play cer­tain crick­et shots, Samuels wants the crick­eters to de­vel­op ad­di­tion­al skills dur­ing the camp.

“We are go­ing in­to when you play the shot, why you play the shot, and where you play the shot,” he said.

Samuels, the el­der broth­er of West In­dies bats­man Mar­lon, played six match­es for West In­dies be­tween April 1996 and Feb­ru­ary 1997 with an av­er­age of 37.2 runs per in­nings. He not­ed that while the camp will help the crick­eters de­vel­op their tech­ni­cal skills, each play­er is unique and will play the same shots dif­fer­ent­ly.

“Once you un­der­stand how your body op­er­ates, be­cause every­one is dif­fer­ent, and al­though we play the same shots, the cuts, the pulls, our body op­er­ates dif­fer­ent­ly in terms of ex­e­cut­ing those shots,” Samuels ex­plained.

He added, “We are talk­ing about body po­si­tion­ing, we are talk­ing about ac­cess­ing off­side and on­side, so once you un­der­stand how your body op­er­ates, how you are able to play these shots, then it is much bet­ter for you to ex­e­cute when that time comes.”