West In­dies leg-spin­ner Samuel Badree has been do­ing great work in terms of de­vel­op­ing young crick­eters on and off the field in South Trinidad.

The right han­der has formed BASE (Badree Acad­e­my of Sport and Ed­u­ca­tion) and it has caught on well. Just re­cent­ly­he took over 100 chil­dren from BASE, to the icon­ic Queen's Park Oval to sup­port the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force as they bat­tled against the Bar­ba­dos Pride.

The chil­dren were in awe as they met some of their he­roes and icons and saw them live in ac­tion, many for the very first time.

The chil­dren al­so had a sur­prise vis­it from West In­dies In­ter­na­tion­al bats­man Dar­ren Bra­vo who took the time out to sign au­to­graphs and take pic­tures with his ador­ing fans. Bra­vo was very im­pressed by what he saw and by the en­thu­si­asm and pas­sion dis­played by the chil­dren.

Dur­ing the lunch break, mem­bers of the Red Force team, led by Yan­nick Ot­t­ley, made their way over to the stands to greet the young­sters.

The in­ter­ac­tion in­deed will be in­deli­bly etched in the mem­o­ries of the chil­dren.

Ac­com­pa­ny­ing the chil­dren were some par­ents and the staff of BASE who en­sured the ex­pe­ri­ence was a safe and en­joy­able one for the chil­dren and that it would mo­ti­vate some of them to pur­sue the game at the high­est lev­el.

BASE would like to thank all those who made this trip pos­si­ble in­clud­ing the TTCB, Min­istry of Sport, TECU, Bar­rack­pore Is­lam­ic Cen­tre, all par­ents, chil­dren and staff for mak­ing this a most trea­sured day in the life of these chil­dren. Badree in­di­cat­ed that this was some­thing the chil­dren were re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to and was glad that the day was a re­sound­ing suc­cess. He added that BASE was all about pro­vid­ing rich ex­pe­ri­ences for the Na­tion's youth and mean­ing­ful­ly and pos­i­tive­ly en­gag­ing the fu­ture gen­er­a­tion.

"Too of­ten we are bom­bard­ed by neg­a­tiv­i­ty on the news and in so­cial me­dia but to­day we have a case where chil­dren are in­ter­est­ed in sports, where they are so­cial­is­ing with oth­ers from dif­fer­ent schools and back­grounds, where they are learn­ing about their coun­try and the rich lega­cy of the QPO. I am re­al­ly hap­py to be part of this and to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to shape the lead­ers of the fu­ture. BASE is com­mit­ted to not on­ly crick­et skill de­vel­op­ment but al­so holis­tic de­vel­op­ment." Badree added that for many chil­dren and par­ents, this was their first time to the Oval and hopes that some time in the fu­ture the chil­dren might have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see a Caribbean Pre­mier League game live.