He is tall and lean 17-year-old Ravi Rampaul, who has more than just cricket aficionados taking a keen interest in the sport. But it is not just his good looks that have earned Rampaul the sudden attention.
The teenager has taken over from where Brian Lara left off and is giving cricket its latest thrills. Not since Brian created history in St. Lucia, has a local cricketer excited lovers of the sport in T&T, as Rampaul has.
The teen fast bowler made fans of the game sit up and pay keen attention, when he put on quite a display of good bowling at the recently concluded Under-19 tournament in Jamaica.
And, though, at that tournament the team did not leave with the winner’s cup, Rampaul certainly emerged triumphant. The unassuming youth quietly broke bowling records when he single-handedly took some 45 wickets, leaving not just batsmen dumbfounded, but his audiences stunned as well. In one innings he took nine wickets!
The former Presentation College, Chaguanas, student (he has now transferred to Couva Secondary) started off cricket as a family recreation. The last son in a family of four boys and one girl, Rampaul’s early training came from his brothers, his uncles and everyone else in the family old enough to pick up a bat.
And when he arrived at primary school, the teaching was no less different. His teachers, quickly recognizing talent, began encouraging Ravi to concentrate heavily on cricket.
As soon as his skills became honed in, Rampaul was on to the bigger things. He is now a member of the well-respected Clico Preysal Club, where he goes to camp on weekends for practice sessions. His real big moment came, he says, when he played the first year at the T&T Under-15 tournament.
"Ian Bishop was the manager and he singled me out and advised me to keep up the training," the affable Rampaul says. "He invited me to play for Preysal and promised to train me."
Ravi then went on to the Under-19 tournament last year and took 23 wickets.
For this year’s tournament, he trained harder. Waking up at 4.30 each morning, he trained without stopping from 5.30 till seven. During the day, he trained again doing push-ups and keeping fit until he was called by the selectors for the Under-19.
"During the third game against Barbados, I was injured when a ball struck me on the foot," Rampaul explains. He was attended to by the team’s doctors and in pain, returned to the field the next day because he was one of the strike bowlers and so the team couldn’t spare to have him out of the match.
Back home, the teenager is once more at school, working hard and trying to put some balance between his cricket and his studies. He’s off to school Monday to Friday, but come Friday evening, it’s off to camp until Sunday evening.
And for him, missing out on the liming is just part of it all.
"I go out when I have the time, but right now, I don’t," Ravi adds. His mind is fixed on the upcoming Busta Cup, which starts in January. If he gets selected, then he will have to pack his schoolbooks in with his bat and ball.
His next stop? "I just want to play out a full season of Busta Cup and hope that after that, I will be selected for the West Indies A-team or the junior team."
Be sure that come next year, Ravi will bowl us over again and again.
