?Hugh Hen­der­son

When Daren Gan­ga was a young boy grow­ing up in Bar­rack­pore, he knew he loved crick­et; knew he had to do his school work since his fa­ther was a teacher; that his old­er broth­er Shel­don looked af­ter him and in turn he had to lead and pro­tect his younger sib­ling Sher­win and that he had to re­spect and obey his lov­ing par­ents.

He lived for to­day and maybe to­mor­row but cer­tain­ly did not think or plan for years ahead. As Daren grew old­er, he be­gan to un­der­stand the pros and cons of liv­ing in a rur­al area; ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the three Gan­ga broth­ers prob­a­bly had more crick­et tal­ent than those around them, and learned to un­der­stand the mean­ing of im­por­tant words such as cour­tesy, re­spect, ef­fort, com­mit­ment, mo­ti­va­tion, en­cour­age­ment, coach­ing, fa­cil­i­ties and com­pe­ti­tion and how they could in­flu­ence his life de­pend­ing on how he chose to play the cards he had been dealt.

As Daren en­tered his teen years, his crick­et tal­ent gained wider recog­ni­tion, was en­cour­aged by in­flu­en­tial lo­cal in­di­vid­u­als and with his ex­cel­lent aca­d­e­m­ic record his fu­ture be­gan to take shape.

To­day we all know the Daren Gan­ga sto­ry but 20 years ago there was no way that Daren could have dreamed, guessed, proph­e­sied or bet that by 2011, he would have played 48 Tests for West In­dies; cap­tained his na­tion­al team for nine years more suc­cess­ful­ly than all pre­vi­ous cap­tains; achieved many in­di­vid­ual and team tro­phies and awards; trav­elled the crick­et­ing world and met fa­mous per­son­al­i­ties from all walks of life; been ho­n­oured by his Gov­ern­ment, ob­tained a law de­gree and es­tab­lished his per­son­al dream-the Daren Gan­ga Foun­da­tion. That is some record for a 32 year old!

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the key char­ac­ters in the play 25 years ago –with one ex­cep­tion, Daren's beau­ti­ful and sup­port­ive wife, Noo-have nev­er stopped play­ing a vi­tal role in this won­der­ful saga-Mom and Dad, Shel­don and Sher­win, al­ways present, do­ing what they had/have to do, mak­ing the nec­es­sary sac­ri­fices to al­low Daren to suc­ceed, giv­ing him cen­tre stage with­out the slight­est hint of en­vy or jeal­ousy and shar­ing his many ac­com­plish­ments with pride and plea­sure. "Team Gan­ga" is a pow­er­ful force with fam­i­ly love at its core.

Last week Daren com­plet­ed an­oth­er cy­cle in his life when he an­nounced he would hand over the na­tion­al cap­tain­cy to one of the sev­er­al young men he has helped nur­ture in the role of lead­er­ship-De­nesh Ramdin.

When Daren was first made na­tion­al cap­tain, he read for­mer Eng­land cap­tain Mike Brear­ley's su­perb book, "Cap­tain­cy", ac­tu­al­ly met with Brear­ley in Eng­land and learned the vi­tal les­son that a great cap­tain knows the fam­i­ly back­ground of each in­di­vid­ual play­er so he can ap­pre­ci­ate what mo­ti­vates him, how his be­hav­iour­al pat­terns have de­vel­oped, and what are his psy­cho­log­i­cal needs.

The me­dia has pub­lished many pos­i­tive and com­pli­men­ta­ry opin­ions and thoughts of high pro­file sport per­son­al­i­ties about Daren's con­tri­bu­tion as cap­tain to T&T crick­et and his ca­reer sta­tis­tics quot­ed have giv­en sub­stance to their views. It is al­ways dif­fi­cult to fight the facts.

I, too, am a great ad­mir­er of Daren the crick­eter and al­ways en­joy his suc­cess­es. How­ev­er, while I have seen sev­er­al bet­ter bats­men and many bet­ter all round crick­eters in my time, I have not known many bet­ter men with such out­stand­ing per­son­al qual­i­ties of lead­er­ship, in­tegri­ty, self be­lief, per­son­al charm, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, gen­eros­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, friend­ship, the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate and set high ex­pec­ta­tions for him­self and oth­ers, to men­tion some of the no­ble words that sum up the ques­tion "who is the Daren Gan­ga you know?"

I have known Daren since he was 18 and even though I am more than twice his age, he has been kind enough to treat me as a trust­ed friend, a gift I trea­sure and a priv­i­lege I val­ue be­yond words. Hope­ful­ly that re­la­tion­ship will con­tin­ue with my role in his Foun­da­tion and the fact that Shel­don and Sher­win come with the Foun­da­tion pack­age, is a won­der­ful bonus. Work­ing with three Gan­gas is a rare plea­sure!

So we say farewell to Daren the na­tion­al cap­tain and wel­come De­nesh Ramdin as a wor­thy suc­ces­sor. Per­son­al­ly, I can think of no bet­ter choice. Daren would not want us to be sad, re­gret his pass­ing the cap­tain­cy ba­ton or feel he is ir­re­place­able and that De­nesh will not fill his shoes, since each of us has dif­fer­ent foot­prints, we walk with dif­fer­ent gaits and our steps are of dif­fer­ent lengths.

There will nev­er be an­oth­er cap­tain like Daren but nor should there be. We thank him for set­ting the right tone which De­nesh will hope­ful­ly adopt and then adapt to his own style.Hope­ful­ly, God's plan will al­low Daren many years on earth to con­tin­ue do­ing won­der­ful things for young­sters as he was 25 years ago, so while Daren the Crick­eter may fade grad­u­al­ly in­to mem­o­ry, Daren the Man will re­main a na­tion­al trea­sure.

Well played cap­tain Daren and thank you for your unique con­tri­bu­tion to our crick­et­ing his­to­ry. We ad­mire Daren the Crick­eter and salute Daren the Man, know­ing he will al­ways be a pow­er­ful, pos­i­tive in­flu­ence on our youth.We all pass this way on­ly once and what mat­ters is not how many tal­ents we were giv­en, but how we used them for the good of oth­ers. To this point in his life, Daren Gan­ga can hard­ly be fault­ed for set­ting an ex­am­ple of how to be a role mod­el wor­thy of em­u­la­tion.

Wel­come aboard Cap­tain Ramdin! At the young age of 26 you have al­ready achieved an en­vi­able per­for­mance record as a crick­eter. Now you have had "great­ness thrust up­on you" and your life will change for­ev­er. From your ear­ly days I have of­ten re­marked that every­thing about you "spells" self-con­fi­dence and lead­er­ship and your many fans look for­ward with keen an­tic­i­pa­tion to your tak­ing over the crown from your great friend and men­tor Daren and mak­ing your reign as cap­tain an out­stand­ing suc­cess. Know that we are very proud of you and wish you all the luck n the world.