'Young Lara' on the ball

SIX-YEAR-OLD Iqwe Craig has been nicknamed “Young Lara” in his hometown of Petit Valley. He bats “in style” and bowls too! “My goal is to get the person out,” he said. His dream, however, is to meet his superstar, record setter Brian Charles Lara. In January, Iqwe (pronounced eek-way) was inducted into Harvard’s Sports Club as a Net 4 player, playing among the juniors. After his first practice session with the club, his coaches were impressed by his ability. He was asked: “Has anyone ever taught you how to bat before?” His father, Noel Craig, was a member of the former Petit Valley cricket club “Forever Young.” While pregnant with Iqwe, his mother Tracy was present at all of her husband’s games, even functioning as club secretary.

“When he was just a week old, I started back with the club and I used to have him lying in the back seat of the car. From the time he started walking, about two years old, he used to pull around his father’s big bat and someone suggested that I buy one of those signature bats for him,” said Tracy, a nurse’s aide. She did, and like Iqwe, the club’s members were also excited about his interest in cricket that they had the words “Forever Baby Young” imprinted on the bat. That was only the beginning. Henceforth, Iqwe and his bat were inseparable. Tracy, who admitted to being unacquainted with most of the aspects of the game, was happy “to just throw the ball for him to hit” in the backyard of their home on Pioneer Drive. As time went by, the Standard Two student at Diamond Vale Government would join the neighbourhood boys in the street for a game of bat and ball. Sometimes, he would be the one to initiate a game of cricket. His popularity as a budding cricketer has grown in the area, to the point where “neighbours, when they find a ball, they give it to him,” Tracy said.

He is restricted to using “only windballs” when playing at home since, just a few days ago he added window pane No 6 to the list of items he has broken playing cricket. On occasion, Iqwe’s father would take him to the Queen’s Park Savannah to practice his strokes and play one-on-one. He is mastering the technique of bowling, placing the seam of the ball between his index and middle finger just like the professionals do it, and the best part — he is taking wickets. That occurred at a practice session with his cricket club where he took three wickets, recently. When he bowls, he said, foremost in his mind is “outing” his opponent. “I aim for the wicket,” Iqwe declared. “I am a pace bowler, I like hard bowling.” Quite familiar with the various forms of dismissals he named a few — “if yuh bat yuh wicket yuh out, catch out, run out, when someone field behind and yuh out of your crease you could get stump out.” He may not be very familiar with positions on field, but is always excited to get home and show his mother the “techniques” of cricket. “I used to show him, now he is showing me,” she said.

One of his coaches, Stanley Evans, was in praise of the youngster. He said: “Iqwe is very interested and eager to learn. He has the ambition and the commitment. Noticeable was his talent when he first started and once he continues like that we can see something great happening.” Iqwe wants to mirror the greatness of Brian Lara, his favourite cricketer. “I like Lara ’cause he does slap balls and he does make runs,” Iqwe said. Another favourite of his is Math. Whenever cricket airs on television, particularly when West Indies is playing, Iqwe is never missing. “Sometimes he switches from cartoons to watch cricket and I would ask him, ‘Iqwe yuh not watching pokemon, pokemon is on’ and he wouldn’t budge,” his mother said. When asked what he would say to Lara if given the chance to meet his idol, he paused, then said: “Maybe if he wants to play a game with me.”