First Cit­i­zens Clarke Road Unit­ed host­ed a suc­cess din­ner for its stand­out youth play­ers on Wednes­day night at the TTCB's Bal­main fa­cil­i­ty. The Pe­nal-based club, high­ly re­gard­ed for its work in the de­vel­op­ment of the game, has once again pro­duced ex­cel­lent young play­ers for T&T and the West In­dies. All­rounder Derone Davis and open­ing bats­man Kieron Joseph have both been se­lect­ed on the WI Un­der-19 team to take part in the up­com­ing Youth World Cup in Aus­tralia, while ex­cit­ing wick­et­keep­er-bats­man Nicholas Pooran and all­rounder Al Small both rep­re­sent­ed T&T in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed in­au­gur­al WI Un­der-17 Re­gion­al Tour­na­ment held in To­ba­go. Both young men are al­so con­test­ing the T&T Un­der-19 tri­als. At Un­der-15 lev­el, Sha­trughan Ram­ber­an is the na­tion­al cap­tain while Bhushan Ma­haraj is al­so a se­lectee on this team, due to leave short­ly for St Kitts.

The gath­er­ing of play­ers, par­ents, spon­sors and sup­port­ers were ad­dressed by TTCB first vice pres­i­dent Dud­nath Ramkissoon, club coach Das­rath Ma­haraj and club mem­ber Adri­an Barath, who re­mind­ed those present that he, too, had ben­e­fit­ed im­mense­ly from the youth pro­grammes and the poli­cies of First Cit­i­zens Clarke Road Unit­ed. Club pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­habir who pre­sent­ed each se­lect­ed play­er with gifts from the club threw out an open chal­lenge to the two WI Un­der-19 se­lectees. He first re­mind­ed them that First Cit­i­zens Clarke Road Unit­ed had pre­sent­ed Adri­an Barath with a lap­top com­put­er on his 18th birth­day and had al­so done a sim­i­lar thing for them both. He not­ed that Adri­an Barath de­liv­ered his pre­sen­ta­tion from an I-Pad and promised any one of the two play­ers, that should they score a hun­dred or take five wick­ets in a World Cup Match, an I Pad would be the re­ward. The evening cul­mi­nat­ed in a high­ly cor­dial at­mos­phere and a sump­tu­ous din­ner. Among those present were for­mer TTCB pres­i­dent Al­loy Lequay, Rev Gary Siew­dass, busi­ness­man Ver­non Har­richa­ran and Un­der-19 Man­ag­er Roland Sam­path.