?Hugh Hen­der­son

Con­rad Hilton (ho­tels) en­dured sev­er­al fail­ures dur­ing the Great De­pres­sion years in ear­ly 1930's, but in his book "Be My Guest," he list­ed three ma­jor rea­sons for his even­tu­al suc­cess. (a) "Work very hard" be­cause noth­ing comes with­out on­go­ing ef­fort, com­mit­ment, a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude and a will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice. (b) "Pray very of­ten" be­cause on the days when you are frus­trat­ed, dis­ap­point­ed and feel to give up, you need God to hold your hand and as­sure you every­thing will be okay. (c) "Dream very big" be­cause if you don't have a dream, what's the point of get­ting out of bed in the morn­ing? I have quot­ed Con­rad Hilton count­less times in my life and I think it ap­plies to two of our young ta­ble ten­nis stars, 13-year-old Arun Roop­nar­ine of Cou­va and 12-year-old Brit­tany Joseph of Arou­ca who work very hard, pre­sum­ably pray very of­ten and cer­tain­ly dream very big which is why Arun has al­ready achieved the fol­low­ing. Arun Roop­nar­ine was 13 years old last Oc­to­ber and in 2010 was vot­ed T&T Male Play­er of the Year in his sport. He was No 11 in T&T na­tion­al men's rank­ings and No1 in Un­der-15 and Un­der-13. He won five re­gion­al and six in­ter­na­tion­al medals and was ranked No 8 for Un­der-13s in Latin Amer­i­ca. Arun al­so won two gold medals in Kung Fu at the World Karate Cham­pi­onships held at Hy­att Ho­tel in Ju­ly 2010. Not bad for a young­ster who must weigh 90 pounds when he is wet! Amaz­ing! This year, Arun as cap­tain of the Boys Cadet ta­ble ten­nis team ("Ju­nior" is the in­ter­na­tion­al cat­e­go­ry for Un­der-18s; "Cadet" for un­der-15s and "Pre-Cadet" for Un­der-13s) won bronze in Puer­to Ri­co in April, beat­ing the No 2 Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic play­er along the way.

Last week the St Vin­cent and Grenadines (SVG) men's na­tion­al team passed through T&T on the way to Mex­i­co for Pan Am Games qual­i­fiers, and Arun helped his Cadet team beat SVG 3-1, win­ning two match­es. His per­for­mances con­tin­ue to bog­gle the mind. I have had the plea­sure of meet­ing Arun and his fa­ther who works tire­less­ly to en­sure Arun is giv­en every op­por­tu­ni­ty to use his tal­ent to the fullest and this in­volves nev­er end­ing fund rais­ing since ta­ble ten­nis is not as glam­orous a sport as crick­et, foot­ball and oth­ers. For­tu­nate­ly, Arun was able to trav­el to Puer­to Ri­co last month and so de­fend his world rank­ing through the gen­er­ous as­sis­tance of the Daren Gan­ga Foun­da­tion. Arun is short list­ed to go to Guatemala and El Sal­vador in Au­gust for two World Ju­nior Cir­cuit Cham­pi­onships and I am ad­vised that the Min­istry of Sport will as­sist in fund­ing Arun's trip so he will con­tin­ue to "dream very big" and bring glo­ry to his na­tion for many years to come. Next week, I will high­light Brit­tany Joseph whose record al­so de­serves the great­est ad­mi­ra­tion, en­cour­age­ment and sup­port and who will al­so be as­sist­ed to trav­el to up­com­ing over­seas tour­na­ments. Thank you Min­istry of Sport!

Ques­tions for WICB

Oth­er writ­ers will com­ment in depth on the Sec­ond Test match in St Kitts, but three ques­tions keep strik­ing me, name­ly: (a) what progress has our bat­ting con­sul­tant achieved bear­ing in mind the lam­en­ta­ble score­cards of the two Tests and pre­sum­ing that when one is se­lect­ed for a Test, one should al­ready know how to bat? (b) in the last year which play­er (s) has im­proved even a tee­ny -wee­ny bit in bat­ting, bowl­ing, field­ing or think­ing, in the opin­ion of coach Otis Gib­son? (c) why was St Kitts with a pop­u­la­tion of about 40,000 al­lo­cat­ed a Test last year and again this year and T&T (1.3 mil­lion) was over­looked both times? Don't we need mon­ey from the turn­stiles to pay for the ex­pens­es? It may make sense to every­one else in the world but not to stu­pid old me, es­pe­cial­ly as the TV cam­eras were di­rect­ed at vir­tu­al­ly emp­ty Warn­er Park stands (al­so in Guyana) on all five days while at Eden Gar­dens in In­dia, a rau­cous crowd of over 80,000 screamed and bawled at the in­ter­na­tion­al stars hit­ting over 620 six­es in ex­cit­ing IPL T20 games. Quo vadis Test crick­et es­pe­cial­ly with Aus­tralia and Sri Lan­ka now ar­rang­ing their own T20 tour­na­ments? As a com­par­i­son, try look­ing at the First Test be­tween Eng­land and Sri Lan­ka and see if you can keep awake.

Con­grats Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo

Con­grats to Jus­tice Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo on his elec­tion as Pres­i­dent of Ari­ma Race Club, win­ning by a 62-61 mar­gin over Pier­point Scott. I am sure all mem­bers hope that Wen­dell works close­ly with Pier to show how im­por­tant and ben­e­fi­cial it is to work as a team us­ing a wide va­ri­ety of strengths. Both men have so much to of­fer rac­ing, so good luck for the fu­ture.

Good word for good food

I want to put in a good word for the new pro­pri­etor of the food shop in the ARC grand stand, who has start­ed off with many pos­i­tives such as print­ing the menus in the race pro­gramme and open­ing its doors be­fore the first race. I have re­ceived many favourable com­ments from pa­trons on the qual­i­ty of the food and I can vouch per­son­al­ly for the de­li­cious callaloo which I de­vour each day. Best of all is the clean­li­ness of the op­er­a­tion – table­cloths are wiped of­ten; the food is served by those wear­ing la­tex gloves and hair­nets and on­ly one per­son han­dles cash. I am a stick­ler for North Amer­i­can hy­giene stan­dards and from a mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive your busi­ness does not de­serve to sur­vive if you can­not give your cus­tomers the con­fi­dence that your hy­giene stan­dards are the high­est. I hope race­fans take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­joy the ex­cel­lent food and re­mem­ber to con­grat­u­late and thank the servers when they meet your ex­pec­ta­tions. We all like to be ap­pre­ci­at­ed when we do some­thing well and this en­cour­ages good be­hav­iour to be re­peat­ed. Thank you in ad­vance for your sup­port.

Tears for Black­pool

I shed a tear for Eng­lish foot­ball club Black­pool, which was rel­e­gat­ed from the Pre­mier League last week af­ter on­ly one year of pro­mo­tion. When I was a teenag­er in the 50's, Black­pool and Wolver­hamp­ton Wan­der­ers were two of the biggest names in world foot­ball with stars like Stan­ley Matthews, Stan Mortensen, Eng­land cap­tain Bil­ly Wright and goalie Bert Williams as house­hold names along with Tom Finney (Pre­ston); Nat Loft­house (Bolton) and Jack­ie Mil­burn (New­cas­tle). I be­lieve Wolves ac­tu­al­ly won three ti­tles in the 50's. Luck­i­ly, Wolves just es­caped rel­e­ga­tion for next sea­son, un­like Black­pool, but the world has changed in so many ways and noth­ing / no­body is sa­cred any­more-not even Eng­lish foot­ball clubs! My Dad must be weep­ing in his grave since Sir Win­ston Churchill and Sir Stan­ley Matthews were two of his great he­roes, and he was so thrilled when we moved to Cana­da in 1973 and dis­cov­ered that 80-year-old Stan Matthews then lived in Burling­ton, On­tario, next door to Oakville where we set­tled. I know Dad al­ways loved me but I scored ex­tra points al­low­ing him to boast that his son lived "near" (20 miles away!) to the great Eng­land right winger.