Ernesto continues to ruin youth tour
Tropical Storm Ernesto passed by Fort Lauderdale yesterday without wreaking any major damage, but it was still not clear last night whether the Under-15 Americas Championship would be going ahead in southern Florida.
Grant Smith?s Bermuda team spent all of yesterday in their hotel waiting for the storm to pass ? instead of a scheduled match with Canada ? with tournament officials scheduled to meet last night to decide how to proceed.
All public parks and sports grounds were closed by Broward County officials on Monday morning ? after the county was put on storm watch ? and they have yet to re-open them.
Bermuda are due to return home on Saturday ? making it extremely unlikely they will be able to play all of their scheduled games against Canada, the US and a combined regional team before they have to leave.
?The tournament organisers have been speaking with the county to see whether we can get the parks back open again and get some cricket played,? said coach Smith last night.
?The storm passed us by without a lot of incident. The winds were pretty moderate, although there was quite a bit of rain and it is still raining. We?ll have a much clearer picture of where we are in the morning after the meeting has taken place.
?We?ve been discussing a whole range of options, including reducing the number of overs per game and maybe playing more than one game a day if time is tight. We?ll have to wait and see.
?In the meantime though, we?re more concerned about finding things to keep the boys occupied because they are eager to get out there and play.?