India vs West Indies 2nd ODI: Shimron Hetmyer at the party

Shimron Hetmyer attends a training session in Vizag on Tuesday. (AP Photo)

As six-year-old Shimron Hetmyer, he would accompany his older brother, Seon, every week to the Young Warriors Club field. While Seon took care of his business as the team's key drummer all day, the small but keen boy would go to court during lunch breaks and snack. In fact, he would not give any chance to other children his age. For, recalls Anil Beharry, former Berbice cricketer turned administrator and long-time mentor of Hetmyer, "the boy would follow the 40-minute break from his lunch in his" bat up until the end "matches. . the old Hetmyer boy would be the "initial attraction" of the present crowd, Shimron or "Hettie" would become "additional attraction".

Sometimes the players and coaches of the club, including Hubern Evans, who played for Guyana alongside Roy Fredericks and Alvin Kallicharran in the 1970s – stayed after the match and gave Hettie some balls, just to be able to see it longer. Soon, Hetmyer was playing with the big boys, which would become a recurring theme of his career in cricket, where he continued to train teams well above his age. Along the way, the aggressive southpaw would also develop another reputation. And while the rest of the cricket world continues to discover the powerful Guyanese striker with a penchant for three-digit scores, those of Berbice who saw him for the first time remember how they identified him as the next great thing, well before taking the Indian. Bowling apart in Guwahati.

"In a first division club match, he crashed a ton against a bowling attack, including (Veerasamy) Perumal and another Guinean regional bowler. There was this great conversation about this 16-year-old boy who was hitting hard. He then scored a hundred goals in his first match against me, and all Berbice (a region of Guyana) was talking about him, "said Devendra Bishoo, a West Indies member from the same region, about his young Caribbean team-mate. . , who has now raised his century mark to another level with his third ton in 13 IDO

Hetmyer hails from a modest household in the Canefield colony, east of canje. His father, Gladston, only recently retired after spending his entire life in the nearby sugar plantations. Seon too, although playing cricket under 19 for Guyana and scoring a century in the region, should pack his bags for cricket and join his father in the fields. But the return of the youngest Hetmyer with the baton was so prodigious that there was only one way in his career, according to that of Young Warriors, based in the village of Cumberland, neighbor of East Canje. As coach Evans has said, Hettie has always been "one clbad above the rest", not just in terms of his batting feats.

"The boy was so athletic. Often, the guys had to do 100-meter sprints as part of their training and he beat them stupidly. He had more energy than all the children I saw. He would reach the ground before everyone and run the three laps that were mandatory before practice. Then he joined the other boys and ran three more rounds with them, "remembers Evans. Hetmyer played for the Guyanese Under-19 team at the age of 14 and quickly became known outside his region and the Caribbean Islands.

Hetmyer's hit for Beharry is a 189, he scored about six A few years ago, he faced a Leguan team in the Essequibo Islands, where he presented his other distinctive talent, that of cleansing the fence with flawless ease. Hetmyer crushed six points en route to his 106th seven-ball at ACA Stadium on Sunday, and finished with the most points in the Caribbean Premier League this year with 24, while three of his Centuries were scored at the strike. more than 130.

"He always hit the ball hard. He was taller and stronger than all the boys of his age, even at the time. He had the reputation of hitting Berbice six times and his centuries would still be marked at a rapid pace. Even his calmest strokes were not just a run on the ground, "said the former spinner on Berbice's left arm. Evans, who has played nine first-clbad matches for Guyana and is now based in the United States, is testing his former student's ability to hit the sixth. He insists, however, to be more impressed by the young Hetmyer's ability to use this same hand-eye coordination to discourage bowlers even when he is playing on the ground.

"I adore when he tilts back and pushes the ball back into the wicket. He will then lie down and later hit a fuller ball with the same intensity, "he says. The coach laments the fact that Hetmyer failed to show his talent at the cricket stick to the same extent. "He's trying to maintain the same typing tempo in the tests. You can not do this. I want him to be more selective because we know he has the skills. He is unlucky to have no good drummers around him to learn as a young (Prithvi) Shaw does, "says Evans.

However, Evans and Beharry were instrumental in giving Hetmyer the necessary breaks from the beginning. This was done not only to "give it the spotlight," as the coach says, but also because they saw in him, even in adolescence, the ability to be a leader.

While most people around him describe the scary Hetmyer as: being a talkative and a "very funny guy," his mentors also remind him of his great respect for the discipline. Like when he arrived on the ground with an ear loop and when he was told that it was against the rules of the club to have him on the cricket ground, the only thing he could do was to go to court. teenager kidnapped her and never tried it again.

"In fact, we were the ones who made him captain, first in our club, while he was 18 years old. Guyana U19 quickly followed suit, as did the 19-year-old West Indies, which he captained at the 2016 World Cup, "said Evans, who welcomed Hetmyer to his home with a big procession two years ago, although Beharry insists that the reception will probably not be as dramatic as this time, Berbice and himself expect Hetmyer to return to India. next year, as he is special on the IPL scene. "

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