Vin­ode Mam­chan

The an­nu­al gen­er­al elec­tions of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) at which ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions will be held, will take place as planned to­day, de­spite a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter served by the ri­val group Friends of Crick­et.The in­cum­bent Move­ment for Change has been served the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter with at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the Cav­a­liers crick­et club of To­ba­go stat­ing that be­cause of the: "Un­law­ful ex­pul­sion of Cav­a­liers Crick­et Club from the Cham­pi­onship Crick­et League Com­pe­ti­tion and de­nial of vot­ing priv­i­leges at Na­tion­al League crick­et elec­tions", they are ask­ing that the elec­tions be pushed back un­til De­cem­ber 15 and the mat­ter ad­dressed.

How­ev­er, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse pres­i­dent of the T&TCB, Az­im Bas­sarath dis­missed the let­ter as mis­chie­vous and said the elec­tions will go ahead as planned."We have re­ceived the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter and we have passed it on to our at­tor­neys, who have ad­vised us to go ahead with the elec­tions as planned. Our at­tor­neys ad­vised us that Cav­a­liers crick­et club and their pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Moses Thomas, who are the claimant, had enough time to have this mat­ter dealt with and their tim­ing is very odd."Bas­sarath fur­ther said, "It shows that they are just up to mis­chief and we are not go­ing to al­low these peo­ple to af­fect the run­ning of the na­tion's crick­et. We are go­ing ahead with our elec­tions as planned and we in­tend to con­tin­ue our good work, which we start­ed two years ago."

Mean­while, the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent by Cav­a­liers fur­ther stat­ed: "Please be ad­vised that the board is em­pow­ered to de­fer such an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing un­til the 15th of De­cem­ber by virtue of ar­ti­cle 11.01 of its con­sti­tu­tion and as such we strong­ly sug­gest that the board utilise this sec­tion to fa­cil­i­tate an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion to this mat­ter."Should you pro­ceed to hold the said ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions my client would be forced to seek an or­der of the court de­clar­ing the elec­tions and any con­se­quent de­ci­sions of the board null, void and of no ef­fect. Fur­ther, you may be made li­able for my client's le­gal costs be­cause you have left them no al­ter­na­tive to in­sti­tut­ing le­gal pro­ceed­ings to seek re­dress," the let­ter stat­ed.

Bas­sarath leads the Move­ment for Change which he led to vic­to­ry over the Friends of Crick­et back in 2009. To­day, the Friends of Crick­et are more than like­ly to forego a chal­lenge as Bas­sarath the Move­ment for Change has gained wide­spread sup­port from through­out the coun­try.Ac­cord­ing to Bas­sarath: "Back in 2009, I nar­row­ly won the elec­tions and it is heart­en­ing to see the wide­spread sup­port that we now en­joy. This tells me that my lead­er­ship of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has been met with ap­proval by the mass­es and they are now will­ing to show that at the polls.He said,"I must not take all the ku­dos though, this must go to my ex­ec­u­tive who has worked tire­less­ly over the past two years to take crick­et for­ward in this coun­try."I have no­ticed that the peo­ple in my ex­ec­u­tive are re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of the game in T&T and they give self­less­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of the sport here."