An­dre E Bap­tiste

It is not of­ten that there is much to praise when you speak on West In­dies crick­et. But the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) sur­prised every­one with an out­stand­ing tour­na­ment last month that left many gasp­ing for breath and ask­ing for more. Per­haps it was the at­mos­phere at Guaracara Park, Pointe–a-Pierre that made this Crick­et Fes­ti­val so en­ter­tain­ing and ap­peal­ing. Or maybe it was the idea that young play­ers would be ex­posed to some of the best crick­et at the high­est lev­el. The tour­na­ment was en­hanced by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of sev­er­al lead­ing West In­dies play­ers out­side of T&T which was a ma­jor draw­ing card. This can on­ly have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on T&T crick­et as many young­sters would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to watch, lis­ten and learn from these play­ers. What was al­so good was the fact that most of the teams were able to hire play­ers from the Caribbean.

If you missed the tour­na­ment, whether by not at­tend­ing or by not watch­ing on Wi Sports (Chan­nel 14), you would have missed a chance to wit­ness Dwayne Smith, Dan­za Hy­att, Kr­ish­mar San­tok­ie, Mar­tin Nurse, Esau Cran­don, Der­win Chris­tain, Suleiman Benn and Trevon Grif­fith, just to men­tion a few. It was al­so great for the 12 teams to have the chance to earn some valu­able prize mon­ey with the the even­tu­al win­ners, Queen's Park tak­ing home $150,000 and sec­ond placed Clarke Road $80,000. These in­cen­tives en­cour­age more young per­sons to play the sport. Be­lieve me, the tour­na­ment proved the en­er­gy and love for crick­et is still around. This may be due to the fact that T&T is the best T20 team in the re­gion. As to the com­pe­ti­tion it­self, there were sev­er­al hard luck sto­ries - none more so than Ce­ram­ic Mer­ry Boys who par­tic­i­pat­ed in two nail-bit­ing fin­ish­es but were on the wrong end in both. They ex­it­ed the tour­na­ment with­out a win.

This would have been a dif­fi­cult pill to swal­low es­pe­cial­ly from two of their lead­ing of­fi­cials, Bernard Julien (coach) and Patrick Ram­per­sad (man­ag­er). In their fi­nal match against SIS Cen­tral Sports, they seemed head­ing for cer­tain vic­to­ry on­ly to al­low Cen­tral Sports back in­to the game with some poor out crick­et. As the game slipped away, one could have seen the an­guish on the faces of Julien and Ram­per­sad. An­oth­er heart-break­ing ex­pe­ri­ence was the quar­ter­fi­nal be­tween T&TEC and two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on, Pow­er­gen which was af­fect­ed by rain. Pow­er­gen's vic­to­ries in the first round al­lowed them to move on af­ter the sec­ond in­nings of the game was rained out. It was a hard way to go out. On pa­per T&TEC ap­peared to have the best team to chal­lenge even­tu­al win­ners Queen's Park with the likes of De­nesh Ramdin, Re­yard Em­rit, Richard Kel­ly, Kevon Coop­er and Ja­son Mo­hammed. But the rain ruled against them and so did the rules.

The sur­prise team was UTT, coached by for­mer West In­dies play­ers Tony Gray and Lar­ry Gomes. The way they per­formed sug­gest­ed that both had in­stilled a lot of self-be­lief and con­vic­tion in their team. This was a team with no stars. It was about ef­fort and ap­pli­ca­tion and be­liev­ing in your team­mates. Un­for­tu­nate­ly their lack of ex­pe­ri­ence was ex­posed, late one night, when Ja­maica's swing bowler Kr­ish­mar San­tok­ie found his rhythm and dec­i­mat­ed their top or­der in one over. Among the mem­bers of the UTT team was for­mer West In­dies pac­er Mervyn Dil­lon and it was good to see Dil­lon ad­vis­ing and ca­jol­ing his team­mates. Dil­lon still has a few more years in him and if he can con­tin­ue to mas­sage this young team along with the very knowl­edge­able pair of Gray and Gomes, UTT will emerge as a force in the crick­et­ing are­na in the not too dis­tant fu­ture. Sev­er­al young­sters shone at the tour­na­ment. None more so than 22-year old Kjorn Ot­t­ley of Cli­co Preysal. Clear­ly this el­e­gant young­ster has a lot of po­ten­tial (a dan­ger­ous word in sports). His stroke-play at times was won­drous. He scored one of on­ly two cen­turies dur­ing the tour­na­ment, a bril­liant 104 and fin­ished with 242 runs to win three pres­ti­gious awards - Best Bats­man, Most Six­es (9) and the Most Valu­able Play­er.

We have to hope Ot­t­ley will be nur­tured. We must find a way to in­cor­po­rate him in­to the na­tion­al se­nior set up since clear­ly he is part of our fu­ture. His team­mate young Guyanese open­er Trevon Grif­fith was vot­ed over­all best field­s­man in the tour­na­ment. In the fi­nals, Queen's Park who ear­li­er in the sea­son won both the Sun­day League and the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion ti­tles achieved an his­tor­i­cal tre­ble, ham­mer­ing two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Pow­er­gen, who were aim­ing for their third con­sec­u­tive ti­tle. Pow­er­gen nev­er chal­lenged af­ter Queen's Park were set up by an open­ing part­ner­ship from QP cap­tain Justin Guillen and Dwayne Smith. Their even­tu­al to­tal was far out of reach and man of the match Smith re­turned to cap­ture three wick­ets to sti­fle them be­fore Benn and Amit Jag­ger­nauth did the rest. As ex­pect­ed the Parkites won most of the awards with Mar­lon Bar­clay - best field­s­man. The TTCB raised more than $750,000 in prize mon­ey from a num­ber of spon­sors which in­clud­ed the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board and First Cit­i­zens, among a large group of oth­ers who all put their mon­ey where their words were and made every­one hap­py.

It was good to see so young­sters, fam­i­lies and women in at­ten­dance on all ten days. Praise must go out to the T&TCB, es­pe­cial­ly pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath, the ever re­li­able first vice-pres­i­dent Dud­nath Ramkissoon, ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers Bal­dath Ma­habir, Dr Allen Sam­my, Su­ruj Ra­goonath, Ann Browne-John, Patrick Ram­per­sad, Ar­june Ram­lal (sec­re­tary) and trea­sur­er Sukesh Ma­ni­am. They must al­so be pleased that chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Manohar Ram­saran did such an ex­cel­lent job. What this suc­cess means is that the T&TCB will be faced with tremen­dous pres­sure next year since they now have to raise the bar on or­ga­ni­za­tion, spon­sor­ship and en­sur­ing the match­es are avail­able to a wider pop­u­la­tion. But it is clear that crick­et was a win­ner and this au­gurs well for the fu­ture. It is good to have an ad­min­is­tra­tion that is not about per­son­al­i­ties and not about them­selves. So it is not too ear­ly to start think­ing of next year's se­ries. This is one tour­na­ment that must not be al­lowed to fall by the way­side.