Improved fitness is key

KEITH GREENFIELD believes the island's development link with Sussex is going in the right direction. The county champions' cricket performance manager and academy director was speaking after watching the Guernsey senior side defeat Dutch Flamingo A last week.

He was here to work with the squad as they took on what was the Dutch A team in all but name.

The Sarnians turned in an impressive performance to win the Fortis-sponsored three-game series 2-1.

The arrangement with Sussex started at the end of last year and sees their top coaches come here to lend their expertise to local players. In return, they cherry- pick the best of them.

'I think the link is going to work well,' said Greenfield.

'It's nice that we can make a difference for the juniors and the seniors and create an avenue where the people can see how they can get to first-class cricket if they are good enough. You've got some good young players coming through and that's good for the future.'

In last week's series, the Guernsey Cricket Board XI won the first two matches quite comfortably, but the visitors fought back to register a three-wicket victory in the final game.

'I think it was good what happened,' said Greenfield after the defeat.

'In an ideal scenario it would have been nice to have won the thing, but we probably learnt more today than we did from the first two games. We were put under pressure and that's when you find out more about people.

'You see how they react and if you don't get into tight games, you will never know how they do react. From a development point of view, we needed a tight game.

'The Dutch underperformed the first two days but the more time they were here, you could see they were learning and getting better. Over the three days they didn't play the spinners as well as they would have liked.

'They had a couple of quite good bowlers, but generally their back-up bowlers released the pressure on us.'

Greenfield thought that the series had been very beneficial.

'It was the first time we've had the opportunity to look at the players outside,' he said.

'We played really well the first two days and it's very clear that we know how to play on Guernsey wickets. We now need to learn how to play outside Guernsey.

'At the KGV we put up a score then we got our spinners on. We are very comfortable at doing that and we can do that well.

'But it would be really great to get this team off the island to places where the wickets are totally different from here. It would be nice to see how the team operates away.'

Other aspects that Greenfield wants to work on are the squad's fielding and running between the wickets. He believes both of those stem from one facet - fitness.

'The technical skills are pretty decent,' he said.

'We need to look at the one or two per cent things more intensely like running between the wickets and the one or two runs that we are giving away in the field. We need to get the whole squad more dedicated to fitness, but there's a lot of talent in this squad.'

He said the main aim for the island side was next year's European Division Two Championships.

After being tipped to win the 2006 competition in Glasgow and gain promotion into Division One, Guernsey underperformed and suffered defeats at the hands of Germany and Greece.

Next year's venue has yet to be decided.

'It would be a fantastic thing if the championships are in Guernsey,' he said.

'If that's the case, I think we've got a very good chance of excelling in that tournament.'