Two Sagicor Twenty20 titles, two second places and one third place in the First Division/Elite Division and the runner-up position in last year’s Sagicor Super Cup stand as the major accomplishments of the cricketers of Maple Club over the past five years.
The period between 2008 and the present represents one of the more successful chapters in the club’s 55-year history.
Last Saturday, the club and its sponsor Consumers’ Guarantee Insurance Company Ltd (CGI) said thanks to one of the main architects of these achievements in the form of a presentation to coach Hendy Bryan during the tea interval on the opening day of the 2013 cricket domestic season.
In a brief ceremony held outside the Keith and Clyde Walcott Pavilion in Queen’s Park, where Maple are engaging home team Spartan in the first series of the Barbados Cricket Association’s (BCA) Elite Division competition, Dwayne Holder, operations manager at CGI, handed over a monetary award to Bryan, a former Barbados fast bowling all-rounder who took 12 wickets in 15 One-Day Internationals for West Indies.
Former captain and current president Pedro Agard praised Bryan’s contribution to the club’s recent successes and outlined the reason for the gesture.
“We are just honouring our coach for the outstanding work he has done with our club for the last five years. We have had a lot of monetary gains since he has been here and we want to reward him for all the work he has done,” Agard told NATIONSPORT.
Agard also pointed out that the former hard-hitting right-hander had grown into a true “Maple man” during his tenure.
“[The reward] is not only for his attributes as a coach. It should be remembered that he joined us in 2008 and even played in the T20 final which we won. He is a guy who would come to the ground early and help out with the chores.”
Bryan, who counts a stint with Griqualand West in South Africa as part of his first-class résumé, said he felt honoured to be recognized by both the club and the sponsors.
“It is nice to know that both parties thought that I have been doing a good job around the club over the past years,” he said.
“We have been to a number of finals in the various formats, and this is my reward for my input.”
The club’s victory in the inaugural Twenty20 championship in 2008 and again in 2011 topped the list of his achievements, but the 43-year-old took special pride in the club reaching the final of the last Sagicor Super Cup, a competition in which Maple have a fairly modest record.
“Since I’ve been there we had never reached that stage, but I felt good getting that far last year,” Bryan said.
He expressed concern about the slow development of young batsmen in the team.
“Some of [the batsmen] have not been pushing on,” he lamented. “However, our key strength is in our bowling and that is where we get most of our points. But I’ll be working on the batting this season and hoping to see the likes of the two unrelated Parrises [Renaldo and Shane] and Jed Yearwood come to the fore.”
