Vin­ode Mam­chan

As he poured wa­ter on the turf at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre (NCC) in Cou­va, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Rukam Jag­ger­nauth would have re­mem­bered the great days his son Amit en­joyed on that strip, as a right arm off-spin­ner.

Yes­ter­day, Amit called play on his il­lus­tri­ous first class ca­reer which spanned 11 sea­sons. The Bank Vil­lage, Cara­pichia­ma res­i­dent in­formed the CEO of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), Su­ruj Ra­goonath, at 11.15 am yes­ter­day morn­ing, that he had enough and thanked the board for giv­ing him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent the coun­try and even the West In­dies for whom he played one Test match.

He hangs up his bowl­ing boots as the sec­ond high­est wick­et-tak­er for T&T at the re­gion­al lev­el, be­hind fel­low off-spin­ner Rangy Nanan. The Preysal man fin­ished with 366 wick­ets at an av­er­age of 23.

The 30-year old Jag­ger­nauth made his first class de­but for T&T in 2002 and played 69 match­es tak­ing 265 wick­ets for 6,508 runs at an av­er­age of 24.55. His best bowl­ing fig­ures were 7/45 and he took five wick­ets or more 14 times in his ca­reer. He signed off against Guyana in the WICB Pres­i­dent's Tro­phy with fig­ures off 4/78 and 1/18 last week­end at Prov­i­dence.

Jag­ger­nauth said yes­ter­day: "I played against Guyana last week and I did not en­joy it. Be­ing re­al­is­tic I don't see my­self get­ting a chance to play for the West In­dies any­more and this af­fect­ed my mo­ti­va­tion. With this loss of mo­ti­va­tion came a lack of en­joy­ment. I told my­self I had enough and since I was not en­joy­ing my crick­et, then I should not keep any young play­er out of the team. I will now make my way off and an­oth­er young play­er can come in and look to build a ca­reer for him­self."

Jag­ger­nauth's de­ci­sion comes just two days be­fore T&T goes in­to bat­tle against the Wind­wards in the semi­fi­nals of the Weekes/Headley Tro­phy, so what could caused this sud­den change of heart?

"I have been con­sid­er­ing my ex­it since last sea­son. I was due to be­gin my de­gree but missed the dead­line for reg­is­tra­tion and de­cid­ed to give T&T crick­et one more year. So it is not a case of some­thing hap­pen­ing since the last game in Guyana. It has been at the fore­front of my mind and I de­cid­ed that the time had come. I wish the team all the best go­ing for­ward and es­pe­cial­ly for the rest of the sea­son.

"We have a great bunch of guys rep­re­sent­ing T&T and I know that they want the ti­tle bad­ly and will be go­ing out there to fight for it."

Jag­ger­nauth start­ed his ear­ly days as a bats­man and al­though he be­came known for his ex­ploits with the ball, he was still able to score 722 first class runs.

Jag­ger­nauth played one Test against Aus­tralia in 2008 at Sabi­na Park in Kingston, Ja­maica, snar­ing one wick­et.

At the time of his re­tire­ment, Jag­ger­nauth was a mem­ber of the Queen's Park Crick­et Club.

Since mak­ing his de­but, Jag­ger­nauth has been one of the most con­sis­tent per­form­ers in T&T do­mes­tic crick­et, and in 2006-07 was the lead­ing wick­et-tak­er in the re­gion­al four-day com­pe­ti­tion, then called the Carib Beer Se­ries.

He spent two sum­mers in 2006 and 2007, play­ing league crick­et in Sus­sex, Eng­land. He was the sec­ond-high­est wick­et-tak­er of the 2007-08 Carib Beer Se­ries with a haul of 40 wick­ets and was re­ward­ed with a call-up to the Test side for the home se­ries against Sri Lan­ka, al­though he did not make the start­ing line-up.

How­ev­er, he made his Test de­but in West In­dies' next home se­ries, against Aus­tralia at Sabi­na Park which proved to be his soli­tary for­ay at the high­est lev­el of the game.

Pres­i­dent of the TTCB, Az­im Bas­sarath Bas­sarath said Jag­ger­nauth was al­so close to his fam­i­ly and was even ho­n­oured by the Su­per­stars Sports Club of Moru­ga when he was called up to play for the na­tion­al Un­der-15 team.

"Since then I have close­ly fol­lowed his ca­reer and was not sur­prised when he de­vel­oped in­to be­com­ing one of the best spin­ners in the Caribbean, tak­ing a re­gion­al best of 40 wick­ets in 2006-2007," said Bas­sarath.

"Al­though he played on­ly one Test, we were all quite hap­py that he got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to wear the ma­roon cap for the West In­dies.

"We at the T&TCB will ac­knowl­edge his con­tri­bu­tion to lo­cal crick­et in some tan­gi­ble fash­ion. We are sure that he will re­main in the game as he has been in­volved in it since a tod­dler."