The in­au­gur­al En­er­gy Sec­tor T20 com­mu­ni­ty crick­et se­ries has been hailed a tremen­dous suc­cess by chair­man Richard Brath­waite. This Sun­day at the Bar­rack­pore Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre the league will host their prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny at 3 pm, where the play­ers and of­fi­cials will cel­e­brate their achieve­ments.

Brath­waite, who is chair­man of the En­er­gy Sec­tor Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Task Force, said: "We are very hap­py af­ter the first year of the tour­na­ment. The idea of this En­er­gy Sec­tor project came about be­cause of the need to use sport as a vi­able tool in build­ing com­mu­ni­ties. We were able to get the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), Petrotrin, NEC and Lake As­phalt to come on board as spon­sors of the T20 tour­na­ment, with the aim of touch­ing the com­mu­ni­ties and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.

"In the first in­stance we have had the com­mu­ni­ties of Rousil­lac, Pe­nal, Bar­rack­pore, Point Fortin, Ce­dros, Pranz Gar­dens and La Brea in­volved. And af­ter the in­ter­est gen­er­at­ed, we have had calls com­ing from oth­er ar­eas like Fyz­abad, Oropouche and Siparia want­i­ng to come on board next year." This sea­son a num­ber of na­tion­al play­ers took part in the league in or­der to gen­er­ate in­ter­est and in the end the ti­tle was shared by All Apach­es, of Bar­rack­pore, and Petrotrin Pe­nal. The fi­nals was washed out at Guaracara Park and the prize monies will be shared be­tween the two teams. The first prize was $10,000, while the run­ners-up took away $6,000. Na­tion­al cap­tain Daren Gan­ga, who played for All Apach­es in the tour­na­ment, will be on hand to de­liv­er a speech en­ti­tled, "The role of sport in com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

Brath­waite added that for­mer West In­dies stand­out Gus Lo­gie had been very sup­port­ive of the league and vis­it­ed many of the match­es giv­ing valu­able ad­vice to the young play­ers. He said Lo­gie would be more in­volved in the league next time around. The En­er­gy Sec­tor will be mov­ing ahead to host a foot­ball se­ries, as well as an all fours se­ries, all in an ef­fort to bring the com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er.