?Hugh Hen­der­son

All I re­mem­ber and have nev­er for­got­ten is that Trem­lett put his hand on my head and said some­thing like "en­joy your crick­et son-it's a great game". Mau­rice Trem­lett played on­ly three times for Eng­land and will nev­er make crick­et's Hall of Fame but for many years he was my favourite crick­eter and I fol­lowed his en­tire ca­reer with Som­er­set very close­ly. Then his son, Tim played for Hamp­shire and I fol­lowed his ca­reer and now Chris has come full cir­cle to bring back child­hood mem­o­ries. Mau­rice gave me recog­ni­tion when I was nine years-old and his grand­son Chris made my day when I am near­ly 72. This sto­ry may well bore read­ers to death, but the mes­sage is how a sen­si­tive adult can make a dif­fer­ence to the self-es­teem of a child by the sim­plest of ges­tures and a few kind words. It is won­der­ful to feel spe­cial and cared for re­gard­less of your age. Think about it and put it in­to prac­tice every day.

Turn off the Tarou­ba lights, please!

For the past eight weeks I have trav­elled south of­ten for Daren Gan­ga's Foun­da­tion and could not fail to no­tice a line of sev­en lights on the pavil­ion in Tarou­ba which, my guess is, have nev­er been turned off dur­ing those eight weeks. It is pos­si­ble that the same sit­u­a­tion has ex­ist­ed for how many days/weeks/months, but I can­not swear to that. It may al­so be that they are left on for a spe­cial rea­son but why dur­ing the day? My con­cern is that every­one is bawl­ing that we have no mon­ey and I am sim­ply won­der­ing if any­one would like to in­ves­ti­gate what these lights cost every month. It is im­pos­si­ble to miss them from the high­way as you head south. Just try­ing to do my civic du­ty and keep down the over-runs of the na­tion's most fa­mous sta­di­um to be! I am al­so in­trigued by the re­cent com­ing and go­ing of staff at SPORTT and the point that out­ra­geous month­ly salaries have gone un­chal­lenged for years-in­cred­i­ble! Some weeks ago I wrote ques­tion­ing the val­ue of SPORTT giv­en we al­ready have a Min­istry of Sport and I am still won­der­ing. Am I the on­ly one who needs ed­u­cat­ing? What are the dis­tinct func­tions / ob­jec­tives / goals that dis­tin­guish them and so make both or­gan­i­sa­tions ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary?

Lara's grief

It was very sur­pris­ing to learn that Chris Gayle and Bri­an Lara failed to at­tract a bid at the IPL auc­tion and that Jerome Tay­lor did. I was one who did not agree with Bri­an mak­ing a come­back giv­en his glo­ri­ous past and such a pub­lic re­jec­tion must have hurt him griev­ous­ly. Fame and name last on­ly so long in the mem­o­ry of most. Six years af­ter the launch of Wes Hall Youth Crick­et League in 1967, we had to change the League's name be­cause the new gen­er­a­tion of teenagers el­i­gi­ble for the League, did not re­late to the name Wes Hall. Three years ago I took a foot­ball team from Fe­lic­i­ty to play at Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um and not one play­er could tell me who Lar­ry was! Bri­an Lara's name will live on for decades but his im­pact will fade year by year. That's the sto­ry of life!