En­er­gy com­pa­ny At­lantic has ex­pand­ed its part­ner­ship with in­ter­na­tion­al crick­eter Kieron Pol­lard to pro­vide two schol­ar­ships to young and promis­ing crick­eters to the Unit­ed King­dom to hone their skills.The At­lantic Kieron Pol­lard Schol­ar­ship is the name of the bur­sary launched on Thurs­day at the At­lantic Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools' Crick­et League awards and din­ner held at the Ball­room of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on La­dy Young Road in St Ann's.Pol­lard in­tro­duced the project last year in col­lab­o­ra­tion with his UK-based man­age­ment team In­signia In­ter­na­tion­al which ath­letes Akeal Ho­sein and Savion Lara were ex­posed to and ben­e­fit­ed.Ho­sein was based at Sur­rey Coun­try Crick­et Club, while Lara was em­bed­ded at Som­er­set.

He de­scribed as re­mark­able the re­sults of the ini­tial ef­fort and said un­der the new spon­sor­ship mod­el two young na­tion­als will play club crick­et dur­ing the 2014 UK crick­et sea­son."The fu­ture of crick­et de­pends on op­por­tu­ni­ty. The op­por­tu­ni­ty for chil­dren to be ex­posed to the game, the op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to de­vel­op their tal­ent and the op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to prac­tice, which leads to the op­por­tu­ni­ty for suc­cess."I was blessed to have op­por­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed to me and that is why I am pas­sion­ate about help­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of great crick­eters reach their full po­ten­tial, achieve their goals and per­haps have the ho­n­our to rep­re­sent the coun­try and the re­gion," he said."Once such chance I had was to play league crick­et in the Unit­ed King­dom. I ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from that ex­pe­ri­ence for a num­ber of rea­sons and I thought that it would be very valu­able to young play­ers, if they al­so got the chance to play crick­et abroad, as it not on­ly al­lows the play­er to im­prove the game, but teach­es in­de­pen­dence and oth­er im­por­tant life skills."So, in 2012, I sought to make my vi­sion of pro­vid­ing such an op­por­tu­ni­ty a re­al­i­ty, by of­fer­ing an an­nu­al schol­ar­ship that have a young crick­eter the chance to play club crick­et in the Unit­ed King­dom. Both Akeal and Savion ex­celled dur­ing their time in the UK and I am proud to say that they re­al­ly demon­strate the pool of tal­ent we have in T&T."

The new in­stal­ment of the schol­ar­ship will cov­er the air­fare of the two ath­letes to and from the UK and will in­clude ex­cess al­lowance. They will earn full mem­ber­ship with a rep­utable crick­et club, as well as pay­ment of reg­is­tra­tion fees re­quired for club's over­seas play­ers and of course the op­por­tu­ni­ty to train.Qual­i­ty ac­com­mo­da­tion awaits suc­cess­ful can­di­dates in an en­vi­ron­ment which Pol­lard said will en­sure their se­cu­ri­ty. The re­quired train­ing kit will be in­clud­ed in the bur­sary.He said, "My man­age­ment team in the UK over­sees this ven­ture to make sure things runs smooth­ly, spend time with and even play crick­et with the schol­ars."In­deed, just yes­ter­day the In­signia team had lunch with Savion and his club, who can­not speak high­ly enough of the im­pact that Savion had this year. It's not just the runs he scored, but his work eth­ic and per­son­al­i­ty have been high­ly praised and they are ex­cit­ed about who they will host next year."Savion has now im­pressed to the lev­el that he will at­tract of­fers from var­i­ous clubs in the area to re­turn next year, and we fore­see a fu­ture where­by in a few years' time, there will be a num­ber of Trinida­di­an play­ers all play­ing in and around the Lon­don area."Pol­lard ex­pressed hope that the At­lantic Kieron Pol­lard Schol­ar­ship will help pro­pel young crick­eters in­to the realm of pro­fes­sion­al crick­et, there­fore en­abling them a sus­tain­able fu­ture for the game in the coun­try and the re­gion.