Fighting poverty to play for your country's national team is no easy feat, and one Jamaican star can attest to this fact. Rovman Powell, whose heroics are on display for Delhi Capitals (DC) in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) season, has gone through all kinds of hardships. But now he is reaping the rewards of his successes with West Indies and his various franchise teams.
The 28-year-old credits his mother Joan Plummer for his humble nature that has helped him do so well in the domestic and international circuits, “No adjectives are enough to describe my mother. I grew up watching her wash clothes for people just to make a living, just to put food for us, just for me to go to school,” Powell says in a documentary series produced by Caribbean Premier League.
His mother was asked to abort her son by his father, who then ended the relationship to take care of her son on her own. She did odd jobs to support both of them, and Powell remembers this every time he is faced with challenges, “Whenever I am faced with tough challenges, I tell myself, ‘ listen I am not doing this for myself… I am doing it for my mother, and my sister. Maybe if I was doing it for myself, I would have stopped. I am doing it for the ones I love just so that they can live a better life than what I had when I was a child. She is an incredible woman.”
Powell and his family lived a poor yet contented life until he came back home from school one day with a bat in hand. Joan remembers that day clearly. She had just told him that there was 'just little food' for him and his sister when the young, budding cricketer responded, “Don’t worry Mum, I am going to take you out of poverty with cricket.”
And Powell has done just that. Against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Thursday, May 5, he hit a brilliant fifty, slamming a flurry of sixes and fours off another rising star Umran Malik. Powell smashed six sixes and three fours, scoring 67 runs in 35 balls, taking his strike rate up to 191.42. He also hit an unbeaten 25-ball 61 for the Northern Warriors as they beat Pakhtoons by 22 runs to win the second edition of the T10 League in 2018.
“There is a hunger deep within me that I want to be compared with top cricketers around the world. When people sit down and talk about good cricketers they have seen, there should be Rovman Powell’s name,” he commented. “Still a long way to go. Keep doing what I am doing, keep improving and I will get there.”
