Eighteen-year-old Antiguan and Leeward Islands cricketer Jewel Andrew is currently the best batter in the Caribbean.
This is the opinion of West Indies fast bowler and fellow Antiguan, Alzarri Joseph, who gave his assessment of the young batting prodigy while speaking on the Good Morning Jojo sports show earlier this week and urged those in authority to do all in their power to further nurture his talent.
“In my opinion, I think he is the best batter in the Caribbean at the moment. I don’t think there are much people that have the ability to bat like he does,” he said. “He just scores so freely, he never looks in trouble and I enjoy bowling to him in the nets because I get to rile him up a bit because he finds it very difficult to score against me but he gets it off with the other bowlers.
“For me, I think he’s pretty much the best batter we have in the Caribbean, so it’s about nurturing that talent and not allowing it to go down the drain or allowing time to go past and he don’t really fulfill his potential.”
Andrew, last week, registered his maiden first-class century — 122 off 139 balls against Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) in the West Indies Championship here at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium. His knock included 12 boundaries and three towering sixes.
The batter, who represented the West Indies U19 at ICC Men’s Under-19 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2023, also made his CPL debut for the Antigua and Barbuda Falcons last year.
Joseph went on to critique his own performance with the bat, admitting there is room for improvement.
“To be honest, I don’t think I’ve lived up to my batting potential but that’s something I am working on. I haven’t really had much time to do as much as I wanted to on my batting because I’ve been playing so much. I’ve been prioritising a bit more rest in terms of staying off my feet. I go to training and I do my bowling; I do a bit of batting and I could spend a bit more time, but I’d rather use that time to just rest and recover,” he said.
Joseph has scored a total of 701 runs in 37 Tests with a highest of 86 while he has scored 426 runs in 75 ODI matches. In 38 T20 Internationals, the Antiguan has scored 121 runs while he has amassed 1420 First Class runs in 74 matches with a highest score of 89.
