The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) re­newed its com­mit­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of na­tion­al crick­et when it spon­sored the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board's (TTCB) Na­tion­al Acad­e­my.

Ac­cord­ing to NGC's vice pres­i­dent Nar­ine­jit Pariag, who ad­dressed Acad­e­my in­ductees and TTCB mem­bers at the launch of the Acad­e­my last Fri­day: "NGC is once again pleased to stand as cor­po­rate part­ners with the TTCB to launch the 2016 NGC/TTCB Na­tion­al Acad­e­my.

"It is a source of great pride to us that our part­ner­ship with the TTCB not on­ly helps sup­port one of the most avid­ly-fol­lowed and pas­sion­ate­ly-spec­tat­ed sport in our coun­try, but al­so en­ables ini­tia­tives such as this one, which tar­get our na­tion's crick­et­ing youth."

The NGC/TTCB part­ner­ship has been on-go­ing for the past sev­en years, with of­fi­cial MOUs agreed in 2012-2013 and 2014-2016. Since 2013, NGC has shared ti­tle spon­sor of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my with TTCB, con­tribut­ing over $1.3m to this en­deav­our.

This sup­port has al­lowed the TTCB to plan for the fu­ture of the game with a greater de­gree of cer­tain­ty and con­fi­dence.The Acad­e­my con­cept be­gan in 2002. Its in­ductees are be­tween the ages of 17 and 19 years old.

The pro­gramme is con­duct­ed over 12 week­ends with 11 week­ends ded­i­cat­ed to tech­ni­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal coach­ing/lec­tures of the game. On the 12th week­end, the play­ers vis­it one of the re­gion­al crick­et-play­ing Caribbean is­lands for prac­ti­cal as­sess­ment through crick­et match­es.

Cur­rent­ly, 90 per­cent of the T&T play­ers rep­re­sent­ing West In­dies have been through the Acad­e­my pro­gramme, in­clud­ing Dwayne Bra­vo and Samuel Badree.

NGC is es­pe­cial­ly en­thu­si­as­tic about this pro­gramme as it rep­re­sents in­vest­ment in Sport, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Em­pow­er­ment, all cor­ner­stones of NGC's CSR port­fo­lio. "Trinidad and To­ba­go is los­ing too many young peo­ple to crime and delin­quen­cy. As a coun­try, we need to make op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to our youth for pro­duc­tive en­gage­ment in their free time," not­ed Pariag.

The NGC/TTCB part­ner­ship en­sures that sev­er­al key ar­eas are pro­vid­ed with much need re­sources, which en­able the TTCB to re­main pro­gres­sive, to pro­duce suc­cess­ful na­tion­al teams, and de­vel­op the game and in­di­vid­ual play­ers across all for­mats.

NGC's spon­sor­ship of the Acad­e­my has al­lowed the TTCB to in­clude a per­son­al de­vel­op­ment as­pect to the pro­gramme. This as­pect is to as­sist in the strength­en­ing the men­tal and emo­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of the play­er, an im­por­tant facet for any as­pir­ing pro­fes­sion­al sports­man.

The TTCB will con­tin­ue track­ing of play­ers through­out the com­ing years as they mon­i­tor their progress and work con­tin­u­ous­ly to as­sist their de­vel­op­ment with work­shops and struc­tured ses­sions at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre.