One of the coun­try's lead­ing con­struc­tion com­pa­nies Hafeez Kara­math Ltd (HKL) has come to the res­cue of a top sport­ing team, the Aranguez Sports Club (ASC). ASC ran in­to prob­lems fol­low­ing the fi­nan­cial hard­ships en­coun­tered by their pre­vi­ous spon­sors British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance due to the trou­bles be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the CL Fi­nan­cial Group. HKL took the 88-year-old club un­der its wings and has agreed to ful­ly spon­sor it to the tune of $100,000 for the en­tire 2012 sea­son.

Com­ment­ing on the de­ci­sion to adopt ASC, HKL's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Yash­mid Kara­math told the Guardian yes­ter­day:

"Our com­pa­ny has been qui­et­ly as­sist­ing com­mu­ni­ty groups and when we re­ceived the 'SOS' as it were from the Pres­i­dent of the Aranguez Sports Club, Sharaz Mo­hammed, we glad­ly agreed to of­fer them all the help we can es­pe­cial­ly as the ASC is lo­cat­ed in the same dis­trict where our com­pa­ny has it is head­quar­ters. "We hope that the club will con­tin­ue to nur­ture young peo­ple in­to na­tion­al sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties as it has been do­ing over its very long his­to­ry."

Es­tab­lished in 1924, the Aranguez Sports Club has con­tributed and still con­tin­ues to as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of well-round­ed cit­i­zens through sports and the aca­d­e­mics, ac­cord­ing to pres­i­dent Mo­hammed. It has a thriv­ing coach­ing clin­ic geared to­wards pro­mot­ing and de­vel­op­ing the po­ten­tials of young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and its en­vi­rons. Some of its en­vi­able achieve­ments over the years in­clude plac­ing third in the 1999 Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board, North Zone com­pe­ti­tion and win­ning all the ti­tles in the TTCB's Su­per League in 2002.

Last year, both the first team, which is cap­tained by 16-year-old Vikash Mo­han, and sec­ond team were run­ners up in their re­spec­tive leagues and ASC took sec­ond place in the T20 fi­nal. This year ASC se­cured the East North Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion and pro­mo­tion to the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion. Some of the out­stand­ing crick­eters pro­duced for the Na­tion­al and West In­dies teams are Char­ran Singh, Im­ti­az Ali, Ver­non Sadaphal and Fyzudeen Han­iff, with the youth­ful cap­tain lead­ing the West In­dies Un­der-16 team which toured Aus­tralia in 2010.