Vin­ode Mam­chan

For­mer na­tion­al crick­et cap­tain and Sports Am­bas­sador, Daren Gan­ga has dis­pelled as ru­mours of his pos­si­ble el­e­va­tion to the post of Min­is­ter of Sport in T&T.

Cur­rent­ly, Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith is act­ing in the post but so­cial me­dia was ac­tive yes­ter­day, with some peo­ple say­ing that the for­mer West In­dies open­er was tipped to take the po­si­tion.

The po­si­tion be­came va­cant when Anil Roberts re­signed last week, af­ter four years at the helm of the min­istry. Roberts ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion af­ter al­le­ga­tions of wrong do­ing by of­fi­cials of Life­S­port.

When T&T Guardian spoke to Gan­ga in St Kitts yes­ter­day he said: "No one has con­tact­ed me on that mat­ter." The man who has been cred­it­ed with lead­ing this coun­try through their most suc­cess­ful pe­ri­od in re­gion­al crick­et then laughed and said: "Boy what you say­ing? That is all ru­mours as far as I know."

Sources close to the sit­u­a­tion said that Gan­ga has been ap­proached at an un-of­fi­cial lev­el and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment is still look­ing at a num­ber of peo­ple be­fore mak­ing an of­fi­cial ap­proach. Ac­cord­ing to one in­sid­er: "Gan­ga has been one of many who dif­fer­ent peo­ple have asked if he is in­ter­est­ed in the job and right now a num­ber of top peo­ple are be­ing ap­proached and then one of them will get the of­fi­cial of­fer."

How­ev­er, for Gan­ga to be­come Sports Min­is­ter he must be ap­point­ed a sen­a­tor which means the Prime Min­is­ter will have to sev­er ties with a sit­ting sen­a­tor to ap­point a new min­is­ter out­side her Cab­i­net.

Who­ev­er goes in­to the po­si­tion would have their hands full, af­ter the dam­age done to the min­istry, based on the Life­S­port rev­e­la­tion. On the oth­er hand they would al­so be in a po­si­tion to hand over a num­ber of mas­sive projects that was pi­lot­ed by Roberts. Among them are the world class Aquat­ic Cen­tre, the Cy­cling Velo­drome and the Ten­nis Cen­tre.

The Ten­nis Cen­tre would be the first to be hand­ed over and this is ex­pect­ed to be done in No­vem­ber. The oth­er mega-projects are all es­ti­mat­ed to be com­plet­ed by May of next year.