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Sunday, July 27, 2025

Rampersad calls on WICB to fund pro-league

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20131221

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) and pres­i­dent of Mer­ry­boys Crick­et Club, Patrick Ram­per­sad, says one of the so­lu­tions to solv­ing the prob­lems in West In­dies crick­et is get­ting a pro-league go­ing in T&T and Bar­ba­dos.

Ram­per­sad said pro­fes­sion­al­ism is bad­ly lack­ing in West In­dies crick­et and if the play­ers are not ex­posed to a pro­fes­sion­al en­vi­ron­ment dur­ing their club days, it will be hard to be any dif­fer­ent when they grad­u­ate to the se­nior team.

"I agree with a col­umn writ­ten in the Sportview in the Guardian that West In­dies' prob­lems is just a re­flec­tion of the Caribbean so­ci­ety. In this re­gard, we need to look for a so­lu­tion along these lines," Ram­per­sad said.

"Af­ter care­ful thought I think that one of the ways we can change things is by get­ting pro­fes­sion­al­ism in­to the equa­tion. I think that one of the best ways of do­ing this is by look­ing at the do­mes­tic crick­et struc­ture in the Caribbean and chang­ing it from that lev­el to the way up." Ram­per­sad said the so­lu­tion can be found right here in T&T.

"The T&T do­mes­tic league is the best or­gan­ised in the re­gion, with­out a doubt. In this re­gard I think that T&T should be a cat­a­lyst for the pos­i­tive change that is need­ed in West In­dies crick­et," he said.

"I am call­ing for a pro­fes­sion­al league in T&T. This league would cater not on­ly to play­ers from this coun­try but al­so for play­ers from oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries as well."

He added, "The West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) must iden­ti­fy four play­ers from each coun­try they want to work with and as­sign them to the dif­fer­ent clubs in Trinidad. These play­ers must be up and com­ing young­sters. This would make 20 play­ers from across the re­gion avail­able to play in the T&T pro­fes­sion­al league. Each club has to be fund­ed by the West In­dies Crick­et Board." He said un­der such a struc­ture, the play­ers would de­vel­op the pro­fes­sion­al at­ti­tude nec­es­sary to make them world class play­ers.

"The clubs would cul­ti­vate in the young­sters the right at­ti­tude and bring that lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism that is need­ed. The league can run for six months and the next six months they can do a sim­i­lar pro­fes­sion­al league in Bar­ba­dos. The set up will be sim­i­lar to the Eng­lish pro league.

"Here, the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go must al­so get in­volved in the league that is played in this coun­try. We need to get State en­ter­pris­es to adopt each of the 10 clubs, so that the mon­ey will be avail­able to pay the play­ers well. When this is done the play­ers would be able to train every day and just con­cen­trate on their crick­et, be­cause it then be­comes their job. Pro­fes­sion­al man­agers, train­ers, coach­es and even scor­ers would then come in­to play as well and there would be em­ploy­ment for many peo­ple."

He said the league should be played from Fri­day to Sun­day as three-day games, adding once the play­ers are con­tract­ed by the clubs they would not need to seek per­mis­sion from any em­ploy­er to play on the Fri­day be­cause their em­ploy­er would be the own­ers of the pro league


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