Vin­ode Mam­chan

In a bid to im­prove the stan­dard of crick­et at the Preysal crick­et club, chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC), Dave Per­sad has de­cid­ed that on­ly crick­et will be played at the ground and ap­proved a rec­om­men­da­tion by the club for this move.Club pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Har­ford led a del­e­ga­tion that in­clud­ed sec­re­tary Ca­mal Bas­deo and mem­ber Wazir Ali that met with Per­sad last Fri­day at the Cor­po­ra­tions head quar­ters in Cou­va. Per­sad, af­ter lis­ten­ing to their pleas de­cid­ed to make the ground a 'crick­et on­ly' venue and will now shift foot­ball and oth­er sports to the Po­lo ground a stone's throw away. Har­ford and com­pa­ny said that once the venue is used for oth­er sports then it af­fects prac­tice ses­sions for the crick­eters, as well as de­stroys the play­ing sur­face and with the club play­ing in the top flight of lo­cal crick­et, this was not ide­al.

Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad :"Preysal crick­et club is a house­hold name in cen­tral and as a mat­ter of fact Trinidad and To­ba­go. They have pro­duced a num­ber of great crick­eters and now what the of­fi­cials are telling me is that the qual­i­ty of the crick­et is be­ing com­pro­mised be­cause the venue is be­ing used for a num­ber of oth­er sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties."What we have de­cid­ed to do is to make the In­shan Ali Park, a 'crick­et on­ly' venue and the foot­ball and oth­er sports will now be played at the Po­lo ground near­by." Re­cent­ly the CT­TRC hand­ed over a new car park for cit­i­zens us­ing the In­shan Ali Park and fur­ther work is to be done at the venue.The Po­lo ground is al­so get­ting a ma­jor up­grade as the CT­TRC in con­junc­tion with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) is in­stalling a new pavil­ion, as well as play­ing field and bas­ket­ball court for the res­i­dents of the area.Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad :"This arrange­ment I think would lead to bet­ter­ment for all and we at the CT­TRC will be sup­port­ing the peo­ple of the area in get­ting out and play­ing sports in or­der to lead a healthy lifestyle."