Vin­ode Mam­chan

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny $13m in­to lo­cal crick­et over the next three years.The won­der­ful news was de­liv­ered by Cas­san­dra Pa­trovani-Sylvester the vice-pres­i­dent of Hu­man and Cor­po­rate Re­la­tions at NGC, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Queen's Park Oval yes­ter­day.NGC has been a spon­sor of lo­cal crick­et for the past three years and to date has in­vest­ed al­most $10m. Dur­ing the last term of the spon­sor­ship the funds were al­lo­cat­ed to a va­ri­ety of en­deav­ours for ex­am­ple, the prepa­ra­tion of the na­tion­al team for the Cham­pi­ons League, as well as the do­mes­tic T20 and Zon­al crick­et.

Pa­trovani-Sylvester said: "As a com­pa­ny that has been par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in youth de­vel­op­ment over the years, we were es­pe­cial­ly ex­cit­ed that a por­tion of our spon­sor­ship funds went to sup­port the TTCB's Grass­roots De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, which helps to bring good coach­ing, equip­ment and play­ing ar­eas to young en­thu­si­asts through­out our com­mu­ni­ties."I am pleased to say that the 2011 to 2013 spon­sor­ship arrange­ment proved to be so ben­e­fi­cial to all par­ties that we were ap­proached once again by the TTCB to con­tin­ue our spon­sor­ship for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2016. We hap­pi­ly agreed to an­oth­er arrange­ment which will see NGC dis­burs­ing TT$4.45M each year for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2016."The funds will be al­lo­cat­ed in a sim­i­lar man­ner but with a few changes. The re­struc­tur­ing of the Cham­pi­ons League T20 tour­na­ment has led to the item be­ing re­moved from the fund­ing sched­ule. In­stead, the TTCB has pro­posed a re­al­lo­ca­tion of these funds to­wards oth­er ar­eas and the in­clu­sion of new ar­eas of sup­port.

Once again, youth de­vel­op­ment will be on the agen­da, as funds will be al­lo­cat­ed to pro­vide train­ing for promis­ing young crick­eters at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my and con­tin­ued sup­port for the Grass­roots De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.The 142 clubs that com­prise the sev­en zones in Trinidad and the 12 clubs in the To­ba­go Zone, are al­so in line to re­ceive sub­ven­tions to cov­er their ac­tiv­i­ties and ex­pens­es.Pres­i­dent of the T&TCB, Az­im Bas­sarath was on hand and thanked NGC for their con­tin­ued sup­port, say­ing that the NGC and the TTCB make the per­fect part­ner.

"We are very for­tu­nate in­deed that NGC has come on board with us for an­oth­er three years. We have done a lot of work and there is still much to be done and hav­ing such a suc­cess­ful part­ner in NGC, can on­ly lead to bet­ter things."

Look­ing at the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, Bas­sarath said the TTCB stands ready to join the gov­ern­ment in try­ing to erad­i­cate the ills through sport. "We at the TTCB are ea­gle-eyed and is will­ing to get in­volve with the gov­ern­ment in do­ing our part through crick­et to help rid this coun­try of its so­cial ills. Crick­et and sport on the whole is an im­por­tant tool in help­ing with so­cial trans­for­ma­tion and the TTCB stands ready to do its part."Mean­while, the TTCB al­so used the oc­ca­sion to re­veal the names of the play­ers who would be rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try in the up­com­ing Re­gion­al Su­per50 tour­na­ment that will be staged here from Jan­u­ary 30.Miss­ing from the line-up is leg-spin­ner Samuel Badree, who has been over­looked in pref­er­ence for the leg-spin­ning all rounder Im­ran Khan. Ke­iron Pol­lard is still not ready for ac­tion and al­so miss­es out. Apart from these guys the squad is packed with the reg­u­lars and chair­man of se­lec­tors Alec Burns says that he thinks they have the right for­mu­la for suc­cess.The full team in­cludes Dwayne Bra­vo (capt), Adri­an Barath, Evin Lewis, Dar­ren Bra­vo, Lendl Sim­mons, De­nesh Ramdin, Im­ran Khan, Kevon Coop­er, Ravi Ram­paul, Rayad Em­rit, Shan­non Gabriel, Sunil Nar­ine, Ja­son Mo­hammed and Yan­nick Ot­t­ley.