After a temporary pause in their regular development schedule to accommodate the home leg of the Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League (CPL), emerging young cricketers from Saint Lucia have returned to structured training with the third cohort at the island’s Saint Lucia Cricket High Performance Centre (HPC). During the CPL break, several promising HPC trainees gained valuable on-ground experience, serving as net bowlers for both the hometown Saint Lucia Kings franchise and competing visiting teams across the tournament’s local matches.
The group officially kicked off their post-break training camp earlier this week at Mindoo Phillip Park, with sessions focused immediately on refining spin bowling skills under the guidance of Larry Edward, the HPC’s assistant bowling coach and a former first-class spinner for the Windward Islands. Edward, a veteran competitor who claimed 124 wickets across regional competitions, including 77 scalps over a nine-year First-Class career, has centered initial workouts on improving young spinners’ consistency of line and length.
In comments following the camp’s first training session, Edward explained the core focus of the program: “We just needed to get them back into trying to hit those areas.” To build precision, trainees use pitch maps and marked cones to map their target zones, with a clear performance benchmark of hitting the correct mark on 40 out of 45 deliveries. “That’s what we’re looking to do in the next four months,” Edward added, outlining the long-term nature of the development plan.
A staunch advocate for mastering core bowling fundamentals, Edward stressed that consistent mechanical technique is particularly critical when competing on the flatter, faster pitches that dominate modern limited-overs cricket in the Caribbean. “I’m big on fundamentals,” he said. “With spin, you have to actually get on your pivot, coming up and over… guys need to get the ball up and down.”
Edward also warned against prioritizing trick bowling variations that only work in short limited-overs spells, instead pushing his young charges to build the consistency required to perform effectively over long bowling stints. “If you’re not hitting those areas consistently enough, batsmen might get opportunities to score,” he explained. “When you go up to Windwards level, you’re going to get batters who are going to challenge you at your weaker areas more often than not. So we’re trying to get them … to stick long enough on it. They need to do that as much as possible so they can get onto the next level.”
Reflecting on the opportunity the recent CPL break provided for young HPC players, Edward highlighted that the experience of interacting with elite talent has already proven transformative for up-and-coming cricketers who have not yet earned a spot on senior regional or national teams. The chance to bowl to international stars in net sessions gave young athletes direct access to elite competition and coaching that cannot be replicated in routine development training. “This is like exposure, going against CPL guys,” Edward said. “It’s going to give them a lot of tactics and trying to know how to bowl to the senior world-class players. So that’s why we were really big on that opportunity for them, so they could really try to advance themselves, get to know a lot more things, look at areas that they could bowl certain, different things that they could try and see what returns they could get from it.”
Edward, who observed multiple CPL net sessions alongside the young trainees, added that local prospects more than held their own against elite batters, and left the experience with actionable advice from veteran CPL players that will support their ongoing development.