Vin­ode Mam­chan

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) Az­im Bas­sarath says that cur­rent min­is­ter of Sport Brent San­cho has trans­formed the lo­cal sport­ing en­vi­ron­ment in his short stint thus far.

Bas­sarath speak­ing to T&T Guardian said: "The lo­cal sport­ing en­vi­ron­ment is a high­ly trans­formed one. I am sure that I speak for all Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­gan­i­sa­tions when I say this. There is a wel­comed peace­ful­ness in our world of sport.

"A sense of to­geth­er­ness, un­der­stand­ing and calm that pro­vides sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors and ath­letes alike, with the con­fi­dence and im­pe­tus to plan ahead, to work with ded­i­ca­tion and dili­gence to­wards achiev­ing group or per­son­al goals, to nur­ture and en­cour­age our youth and to bring pride and glo­ry to our coun­try by way of our sport­ing ex­cel­lence."

Bas­sarath's strug­gles with for­mer min­is­ter of Sport, Anil Roberts were well doc­u­ment­ed and he has found San­cho some­one he can work with. "From the date of his ap­point­ment, Feb­ru­ary 3, there has been a new dawn for sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"In just sev­en weeks, we have seen what a peo­ple-cen­tered, com­mit­ted, knowl­edge­able min­is­ter can achieve, sim­ply by en­gag­ing those with whom he works at the Min­istry and those whom he serves, the sports­men and sports­women of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Less talk and pos­i­tive ac­tion has re­ju­ve­nat­ed and in­vig­o­rat­ed the en­tire sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty."

Bas­sarath said that bet­ter days were ahead for crick­et in this coun­try be­cause San­cho un­der­stood what it took to move a ma­jor sport for­ward.

He added that the TTCB had al­ways been a na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion that ad­hered to high stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty, hon­esty and in­tegri­ty and would con­tin­ue to build the sport in this coun­try.

"Our books are open to scruti­ny and we have al­ways met with the stan­dards ex­pect­ed from us, by our clubs, our line Min­istry and our cor­po­rate part­ners.

"In spite of all this, we were starved for re­sources for a very long time. We were un­able to de­liv­er on our de­vel­op­ment and ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing pro­grammes in the way we would have liked but we did not al­low our struc­ture and for­ma­tion to col­lapse. We kept ex­pend­ing re­sources, as best as we could, to fu­el the en­tire sys­tem, from clubs to com­mu­ni­ties, to Na­tion­al Teams at all lev­els–men and women.

"We kept the fires burn­ing. From the in­come we ac­cessed by way of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cham­pi­ons League we sup­port­ed our clubs, we main­tained our in­fra­struc­ture and we ren­o­vat­ed the Sir Frank Wor­rell De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre. We were chal­lenged, se­ri­ous­ly so, but we did not shirk our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Bas­sarath con­tin­ued: "Let me place on record that let­ters re­quest­ing as­sis­tance were sent twice be­fore to the Min­istry of Sport with lit­tle or no re­sponse. This time around–let­ter sent on Feb­ru­ary 9–pos­i­tive re­sponse– March 25. Less talk, Pos­i­tive ac­tion."