Vin­ode Mam­chan

?Hail­ing from the sleepy vil­lage of St Mary's in Moru­ga, no one would have ex­pect­ed Az­im Bas­sarath to as­cend to the high­est of­fice in crick­et, in Trinidad and To­ba­go. How­ev­er, the soft spo­ken Road Of­fi­cer II at­tached to the Pe­nal Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, has de­fied the odds and is now the big boss in lo­cal crick­et. The 52-year old Bas­sarath has al­ways want­ed to serve his fel­low cit­i­zens and as a young­ster, he to­geth­er with two oth­er vil­lagers found­ed the St Mary's Su­per­stars Crick­et Club, which to­day com­petes at the high­est lev­el in the South East Zone. Bas­sarath's prowess as an ad­min­is­tra­tor was ob­vi­ous very ear­ly and of­fi­cials of the South East Zone snapped him up and he en­tered the fray as a zon­al coun­cil mem­ber. Apart from or­gan­is­ing many ac­tiv­i­ties, cul­tur­al and re­li­gious in his area, Bas­sarath per­se­vered with crick­et. In 1996 he was made vice-chair­man of the South East Zone and many around the lo­cal crick­et cir­cles, thought that this Zone was dead and about to be buried.

Bas­sarath would have none of this and the fol­low­ing year, when he was made chair­man of the Zone, he worked tire­less­ly in bring­ing about a change. He had many sleep­less nights and with the sup­port of his de­vot­ed wife Sha­ree­da and his three chil­dren Faoud, Za­hid and Faria, he made it. These days the ones pro­vid­ing the com­fort af­ter a long day, are his pre­cious grand­daugh­ters Nay­yar, Fa­dia and Ziya. Two years in­to his lead­er­ship of the South East Zone, then pres­i­dent Al­loy Lequay made the re­mark at their prize giv­ing, that the South East Zone was the best run in the coun­try. The qual­i­ty of com­pe­ti­tion in the vast South East area rose and many young play­ers start­ed to put their hands up for na­tion­al se­lec­tion at dif­fer­ent lev­els. One of the bet­ter crick­eters to come out of the Zone is West In­dies and T&T left arm spin­ner Dave Mo­hammed.

In 1999, Lequay ob­serv­ing his work, called up­on him to sit as an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber on the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB). He served un­der Lequay as pres­i­dent and then El­lis Lewis be­fore break­ing ranks with that ad­min­is­tra­tion. "At that time I thought that Zon­al crick­et which was my ba­by, was not looked af­ter prop­er­ly. I brought this to the ex­ec­u­tive but did not get the re­sponse I want­ed and I looked else­where." Bas­sarath then teamed up with Deryck Mur­ray and the 'Friends of Crick­et' and they de­feat­ed El­lis Lewis and com­pa­ny. Bas­sarath rose to the po­si­tion of sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent and then in the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, he was the first vice-pres­i­dent. Af­ter a num­ber of run-ins with the ex­ec­u­tive, Bas­sarath de­cid­ed to go 'home' and team­ing up with Patrick Ram­per­sad, Bal­dath Ma­habir, Ann Browne, Dr. Allen Sam­my, Dud­nath Ramkessoon and Su­ruj Ra­goonath, he was able to de­feat Mur­ray and now has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of chart­ing a bright fu­ture for Trinidad and To­ba­go's crick­et.

In his maid­en speech to the na­tion­al team Bas­sarath vowed to sup­port the na­tion­al crick­eters in their bid to per­form even bet­ter. Speak­ing on their re­turn from Guyana af­ter they cap­tured the Pres­i­dent's Cup, he said :"This team has done way be­yond ex­pec­ta­tion and they must be con­grat­u­lat­ed. They have done well in the lim­it­ed overs and Twen­ty20 and we are go­ing to give them all that is nec­es­sary to en­sure suc­cess in the four-day tour­na­ment. "We have not won the re­gion­al first class tour­na­ment for the past few years and I am sure that Daren and the boys would want to cor­rect that. We at the TTCB are com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of the team and crick­et and we are go­ing to en­sure that we do all in our pow­er to sup­port the ef­fort." Bas­sarath made a call for the in­volve­ment of skip­per Gan­ga in the de­vel­op­ment of the game lo­cal­ly.

"I think that Daren Gan­ga has a big role to play in the de­vel­op­ment of not on­ly this team but crick­et as a whole in this coun­try. "I am hop­ing to meet with him as soon as Mon­day to get from him his take on the state of the game here and what can be done to im­prove the game in our coun­try." Bas­sarath has his work cut out for him in the days, weeks and months ahead but hard work his no stranger to him and he is look­ing for­ward to it. "I am very keen in do­ing my part to take crick­et to a bet­ter lev­el in this coun­try and West In­dies as a whole and I can as­sure the pub­lic that crick­et is in good hands."