Nicholas Clarke

At­lantic has in­vest­ed $400,000 in­to the stag­ing of its eighth an­nu­al Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Crick­et League, which will fea­ture over 350 schools from around the coun­try. This was an­nounced dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Pres­i­dent's Box of the Queen's Park Oval in St Clair yes­ter­day. The League will com­prise of two sep­a­rate tour­na­ments: An eight-school Su­per League round robin from May 10 to June 3 and an In­ter-School Com­pe­ti­tion be­tween 350 schools from May 19 to June 7. Fol­low­ing their com­ple­tion, a de­vel­op­ment camp will be held to se­lect a na­tion­al pri­ma­ry school team. The eight schools to qual­i­fy for the Su­per League are St Tius Boys RC, Tu­na­puna Pres­by­ter­ian, San­gre Grande Hin­du, Matu­ra Gov­ern­ment, Preysal Gov­ern­ment, Rochard Dou­glas Gov­ern­ment, Clarke Rochard Gov­ern­ment and Mon­trose Gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day's launch was at­tend­ed by T&T crick­et cap­tain Daren Gan­ga, who com­mend­ed At­lantic for its role in the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal crick­et. "Sport and ed­u­ca­tion are ex­cel­lent ve­hi­cles for the de­vel­op­ment of our young peo­ple and to­day marks yet an­oth­er oc­ca­sion were a cor­po­ra­tion in T&T is mak­ing an in­vest­ment in them. As much as we may take that for grant­ed, we must un­der­stand ex­act­ly how im­por­tant this is for the next gen­er­a­tion of sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties in T&T." Di­rect­ing his at­ten­tion to a group of stu­dents present, Gan­ga en­cour­aged them to strive to dis­tin­guish them­selves both in the class­room and on the play­ing field. "For far too long we have had ath­letes who are not bright thinkers. If you look around at the state of our crick­et, at the state of our foot­ball, there's been nu­mer­ous ar­gu­ments about us not be­ing able to em­brace tech­nol­o­gy, us not be­ing able to keep up to date with the sci­ence be­hind sport. T&T needs think­ing ath­letes and to­day I chal­lenge you, the young boys and girls in our pri­ma­ry schools, to strive to wards ex­cel­lence in both spheres [ed­u­ca­tion and sport]."

Mean­while, First Vice-pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board Dud­nath Ramkessoon said that the League was lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the next gen­er­a­tion of crick­eters in T&T. "It's im­por­tant to en­sure the con­ti­nu­ity of crick­et in T&T and we as a board can­not do it alone. We need cor­po­rate spon­sors to get young peo­ple to play crick­et and to keep them fo­cused on crick­et, which is one of the chal­lenges we are cur­rent­ly fac­ing. It is im­por­tant that at this base lev­el, we get the chil­dren to like the sport and keep them in­ter­est­ed."