At­lantic has in­vest­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400,000 in­to this sea­son's Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Crick­et League (NPSCL), which has fea­tured over 8,000 play­ers from 350 schools from across the coun­try. This was an­nounced dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Pres­i­dent's Box in the Queen's Park Oval in St Clair yes­ter­day. The League, which be­gan its fi­nal stages on Tues­day and runs un­til June 22, com­pris­es of four sep­a­rate com­pe­ti­tions in­clud­ing the Boys Cham­pi­ons League, the In­ter­school Girls League and the In­ter-dis­trict Boys and Girls Di­vi­sions. De­fend­ing Boys Cham­pi­ons, Whin An­gli­can School of To­ba­go got off to a pos­i­tive start on Tues­day, whip­ping East­ern Boys Gov­ern­ment by nine wick­ets in the first round. They were boost­ed by the in-form all­rounder Joshua James, who made an un­beat­en 24 and took two for sev­en off four overs.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's launch, NPSCL Pres­i­dent Ian Ram­lal point­ed out that the league played an im­por­tant role in help­ing to shape both so­ci­ety and the sport of crick­et in T&T: "Young peo­ple are the bedrock of our na­tion and we aim to max­imise the po­ten­tial of our stu­dents, cre­at­ing well-round­ed and emo­tion­al­ly bal­anced in­di­vid­u­als. Sport en­cour­ages growth and ma­tu­ri­ty and helps build self-es­teem, con­fi­dence and team­work skills. If we can teach these val­ues at a young age, it will be hard for them to be led astray."

Ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing of girls in at­ten­dance, for­mer West In­dies Women's cap­tain Ann Brown John en­cour­aged them to make the most of the op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able: "Years ago they said crick­et was on­ly for boys. Peo­ple would see me play­ing in the Sa­van­nah and asked me why I wasn't at home wash­ing clothes. We have come a long way since then... Crick­et can take you all over the world once you take it se­ri­ous­ly enough."