Clydeen Mc­Don­ald

Sev­er­al im­pres­sive per­for­mances for his club British Amer­i­can Aranguez Sport Club in the North Zone, earned 14-year-old Vikash Mo­han the "Crick­eter of the Year" award at the Mo­hammed Elec­tri­cal Aranguez Coach­ing Clin­ic. The tal­ent­ed right-arm spin­ner picked up the prize when the clin­ic held it's an­nu­al awards cer­e­mo­ny at the club's ground in Aranguez last week. Mo­han, who pre­vi­ous­ly cap­tained the T&T Un­der-13 team and the rest of the grad­u­at­ing class came in for high praise from T&T se­nior team cap­tain Daren Gan­ga.

"I want to ap­plaud the par­tic­i­pants and the or­gan­is­ers of this clin­ic for the tremen­dous work you have done over the last few months," said Gan­ga. "When I look at the progamme that you have ex­posed these young­sters to, I re­alise that it is not just about the de­vel­op­ment of good crick­et tech­nique and skills. It is about the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of these young boys and girls that is some­thing wor­thy of praise," said Gan­ga.

He added, "I al­so want to thank the par­ents, who are here this morn­ing be­cause you are en­sur­ing that you give the right amount of sup­port to your kids. I know in my youth that it was the sup­port that I had from my par­ents which made me in­to what I am now." He, how­ev­er,, stat­ed that chil­dren to­day need­ed more sup­port be­cause of the many com­pet­ing in­flu­ences which are present in so­ci­ety.

"The way things are go­ing to­day I can't help but feel that the sup­port which these young­sters are get­ting from this clin­ic and their par­ents is even more nec­es­sary for them than it was for me. In my younger days we didn't have all the bad in­flu­ences of crime, some of the mu­sic and even some of the shows on tele­vi­sion, they have now. This ex­tra sup­port is need­ed to strike some kind of bal­ance in their lives," added Gan­ga. An­oth­er speak­er at the cer­e­mo­ny was act­ing ed­i­tor of the T&T Guardian Valenti­no Singh. Singh used Gan­ga, who is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing his law de­gree, as an ex­am­ple of a pos­i­tive role mod­el.

"Daren is to me an ex­am­ple of what all young peo­ple should try to be. He is the com­plete pack­age. Apart from be­ing a good sports­man he is an in­tel­li­gent per­son. He has achieved a great deal in crick­et and has still been able to do ex­cep­tion­al­ly well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly," said Singh. He added: "This clin­ic and oth­ers like it can't on­ly be about crick­et. It has to be about build­ing your char­ac­ter and build­ing re­la­tion­ships with oth­ers in the camp which will last a life­time."

"In my days at Har­vard Coach­ing Clin­ic I made many friends which I still have to­day. My doc­tor is some­one, who I spent Sun­day morn­ings play­ing crick­et with, I can say the same of my in­sur­ance agent, who al­so spent time with me at Har­vard," added Singh. Oth­er guests at this year's func­tion were pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board, Deryck Mur­ray and CEO of the T&TCB Forbes Per­saud.