Je­lani Beck­les

Out­stand­ing na­tion­al Un­der-19 open­ing bats­man Amir Jan­goo was ad­judged the Most Out­stand­ing crick­eter in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny/T&T Crick­et Board 2014 Acad­e­my.

The an­nounce­ment was made by Taran­dath Sam­my, chair­man of the Youth De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee of the T&T Crick­et Board (T&TCB) at the of­fi­cial func­tion to present cer­tifi­cates and awards to the 14 suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants.

The event al­so co­in­cid­ed with an end of the year get-to­geth­er for the ma­jor stake­hold­ers in lo­cal crick­et staged at the re­fur­bished Sir Frank Wor­rell De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre, Bal­main, Cou­va, on Sat­ur­day evening.

Jan­goo re­ceived an Ap­ple iPad while oth­er big win­ners on the night were Clevon Kalawan (Most Dis­ci­plined) and Akeel See­tal (Most Im­proved) for which they both re­ceived a Sam­sung tablet com­put­er.

And Akeel Mo­hammed copped the award for emerg­ing the in­ductee who best rep­re­sents the spir­it of the acad­e­my.

In giv­ing an overview of the 2014 pro­gramme, Sam­my said the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Acad­e­my com­menced last Sep­tem­ber and was con­duct­ed over eleven week­ends which end­ed in De­cem­ber.

In­ductees at­tend­ed class­room ses­sions on a Fri­day af­ter­noon and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a live-in arrange­ment which end­ed on Sun­day af­ter­noon, over which they were ex­posed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 hours of course­work per week­end.

He said the young crick­eters were schooled in a va­ri­ety of sub­jects, cater­ing to their per­son­al needs, some of which were vi­sion and goal-set­ting, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lead­er­ship, emo­tion­al com­pe­tence, crit­i­cal think­ing and mon­ey man­age­ment.

"Those soft-skills, to­geth­er with a fit­ness regime, are strong­ly re­lat­ed crick­et re­lat­ed skill com­po­nents which com­plet­ed the pro­gramme," Sam­my said.

The na­tion­al Un­der-17 team coach paid trib­ute to a high­ly qual­i­fied team of coach­es and men­tors in­clud­ing the Za­heer Ali Foun­da­tion, head­ed for the for­mer na­tion­al play­er which de­liv­ered on the soft-skills com­po­nent of the pro­gramme.

Oth­ers who played a sig­nif­i­cant part in tak­ing the bud­ding crick­et stars were na­tion­al coach­es Kelvin Williams and David Williams, a for­mer West In­dies and na­tion­al wick­et­keep­er/bats­man, Ra­jen­dra Ra­madin who pro­duced the crick­et cur­ricu­lum for the 2014 NGC/T&TCB Acad­e­my and fit­ness train­er Adarayll John.

Sam­my said the en­tire pro­gramme was ex­cel­lent­ly co-or­di­nat­ed by Naushad Mo­hammed and much cred­it must al­so go to Ku­mar Ram­pat, a West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) Ter­ri­to­r­i­al De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cer who was the fa­cil­i­ta­tor.

Sam­my said he was very en­cour­aged by the re­spons­es from the 2015 in­ductees gleaned from an eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise which con­clu­sive­ly showed the im­mense ben­e­fit that the acad­e­my had on the over­all de­vel­op­ment of the young­sters.

"Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, dis­ci­pline, pa­tience, re­spect for time, self-be­lief, punc­tu­al­i­ty and un­der­stand­ing were some of the qual­i­ties that the young­sters would have de­vel­oped at the acad­e­my," said Sam­my.