The Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA) and long-time youth cricket sponsor Kingston Wharves joined forces to award Under-19 batsmen Brian Barnes and Steven Wedderburn full scholarships for their tertiary education at The University of the West Indies (UWI). The scholarships were presented recently at the JCA office at Sabina Park in Kingston.

The JCA made special mention of the spectacular success of Jamaica’s Under-19 team, captained by Barnes and including Wedderburn, which won the coveted regional Under-19 double in 2023.

The idea of the scholarship came about because of the need to properly reward the cricketers while ensuring their educational goals could be met and in the process, allow them to continue to play the game at a high level.

Dr Donovan Bennett, the JCA president, welcomed the partnership with Kingston Wharves to award the scholarships. “We are very grateful at the JCA that Kingston Wharves has come up with an offer like this where cricketers who have also achieved academics can be recognised and can be helped to augment and to push their whole life skills forward.”

He explained the process to determine the scholarship winners. “There was a joint committee that involved participation from both Kingston Wharves and the JCA. We invited applications, we went through a pretty long process of assessment and at the end of the day this committee came up with the two recommendations.”

The two awardees, as well as their family members and coaches, were in attendance.

“I really feel elated, honoured. I am just happy at the moment, both of us are honoured to get this scholarship. I am just happy about it,” Barnes said.

“I feel pretty elated because this is an honour. This is due to hard work and dedication so I feel pretty good about receiving this award,” Wedderburn said.

Both cricketers are to study marketing, which is expected to last four years.

Kingston Wharves, the financial backers of the scholarships, was represented by Business Development Manager Alfred McDonald.

“We are certainly into ensuring that the persons who are playing the sport are also good academically. We have seen their journey and we want to support their journey in that academic endeavour, so we thought of coming alongside these young men who have matriculated into university [and] providing them with funds to take care of the rest of their university life. That’s around about $300,000 to $500,000 per annum for each of them. We think that that kind of assistance will propel them to do their best both on the field and off the field at school,” McDonald said.

Simone Murdock, the corporate services and client experience manager at Kingston Wharves, who sat on the scholarship selection committee, said the support for Barnes and Wedderburn could extend beyond the current programme.

“Our commitment is to see these two young men through to completion of their degree and then at that time the company will make another decision because there might be another greater need in three years’ time, so what we do now is to commit to getting them through their degree programme and at the end of the programme we see what needs there are for the cricket development and we will make a decision then,” Murdock noted.