The T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) stands ready to sup­port and as­sist in the re­vival of crick­et in the floun­der­ing South Zon­al Coun­cil.This was the pledge made by pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath, when he re­cent­ly ad­dressed mem­bers of the Move­ment For Change sup­port­ers' group which he heads and whose mem­bers dom­i­nate the present ad­min­is­tra­tion of the TTCB.

Bas­sarath was ad­dress­ing the con­cerns raised by South Zone mem­ber Ram­narace Seep­aul of a lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the con­duct of the zone's af­fairs high­light­ed by a fail­ure to hold meet­ings and prop­er­ly ex­e­cute their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.Seep­aul said be­cause of the ad­min­is­tra­tive in­ac­tiv­i­ty at the zon­al lev­el, crick­et has been suf­fer­ing and the TTCB is not to blame as the zone is con­trolled by of­fi­cials op­posed to the present ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er in ad­dress­ing the queries raised, Bas­sarath ad­mit­ted that he was un­aware of what was hap­pen­ing at the zon­al lev­el since no of­fi­cial com­plaint has been made about the zone ad­min­is­tra­tion to the TTCB.But he ad­vised Seep­aul that there must be some con­sen­sus among oth­er mem­bers and of­fi­cials about the wor­ry­ing state of af­fairs and that an of­fi­cial let­ter must be writ­ten out­lin­ing their con­cerns to the TTCB.

"On­ly then can we in­ter­vene and take the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to re­solve the is­sues so as to get crick­et back on a sound foot­ing on and off the field in the South Zon­al Coun­cil," said Bas­sarath.The board has been huge­ly suc­cess­ful re­vamp­ing the Cen­tral Zone af­ter it al­so de­vel­oped sim­i­lar prob­lems in its ad­min­is­tra­tion, mov­ing quick­ly to in­stall a care­tak­er com­mit­tee to run the af­fairs of the zone.

Bas­sarath praised the ground­work laid by com­mit­tee chair­man Manohar Ram­saran and oth­er of­fi­cials in­clud­ing Richard Ramkissoon, Mishri Lutch­me­di­al and Lal­man Kow­lessar for ris­ing to the oc­ca­sion to avert a ma­jor cri­sis.He said that un­der the care­tak­er com­mit­tee, the Cen­tral Zone was able to com­plete their zon­al oblig­a­tions and suc­cess­ful­ly stage the Ram­s­ingh Sports T20 tour­na­ment, the fi­nal stages of which were played un­der lights at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va.

"It was a big turn­around for which we are grate­ful be­cause peo­ple tend to for­get that when Cen­tral Zone crick­et was strong, T&T crick­et was strong so we all have an in­ter­est in help­ing the zone get back on top," said Bas­sarath.He said that the TTCB has al­so been very force­ful in mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Min­istry of Sports and he ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion in the way the present of­fice­hold­er Brent San­cho has been ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of crick­et.

Bas­sarath said that San­cho has al­ready hand­ed over close to a mil­lion dol­lars to crick­et clubs who par­tic­i­pate in the Na­tion­al League and zon­al com­pe­ti­tions, with the women's crick­et fed­er­a­tion and To­ba­go al­so ben­e­fit­ting.The lo­cal crick­et chief said that an­oth­er tranche of fi­nan­cial pay­ments to the main crick­et stake­hold­ers will be forth­com­ing fol­low­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the TTCB who have been in the fore­front of press­ing the case for in­creased as­sis­tance for strug­gling clubs.