Sean Nero

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board of Con­trol (TTCB) Az­im Bas­sarath and Jef­frey Guillen, team man­ag­er at Queen's Park Crick­et Club (QPCC) are in dis­agree­ment over the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Speak­ing to An­dre Bap­tiste on iS­port ra­dio pro­gramme, Bas­sarath said his ex­ec­u­tive sub­mit­ted a bud­get to­tal­ing $31 mil­lion to the min­istry of sport for fis­cal 2015-2016 for the con­struc­tion of a mega fa­cil­i­ty.

He ex­plained that $3 mil­lion was be­ing re­quest­ed for the erec­tion of a sand based out­field and an­oth­er $2 mil­lion for an elec­tron­ic score­board.

The TTCB al­ready pur­chased and im­port­ed bleach­ers to ac­com­mo­date 1,000 spec­ta­tors from its ex­ist­ing bud­get.

But Guillen, in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, did not hold back his ob­jec­tion to this move which he be­lieved would be a waste of tax-pay­ers funds.

Bas­sarath said, "We would like to see a full-fledged fa­cil­i­ty de­vel­oped. The Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um (in Tarou­ba), we al­so want to see that com­plete, hop­ing that with­in the next five years it will be com­plet­ed. I have made sev­er­al calls for the com­ple­tion of the Sta­di­um, but not on­ly to com­plete the Sta­di­um. We would like the Sta­di­um to be hand­ed over to the TTCB to run the fa­cil­i­ty."

In Guillen's view, how­ev­er, fa­cil­i­ties at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre should be up­grad­ed to a world class de­vel­op­ment fa­cil­i­ty.

"So, if that (Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um) is be­ing fin­ished, why spend mon­ey de­vel­op­ing Cou­va? I think I would like to see de­vel­oped a first class train­ing fa­cil­i­ty in terms of in­door crick­et nets; in terms of out­door crick­et nets; in terms of au­dio vi­su­al (equip­ment); in terms of gym (equip­ment); in terms of the sci­ence as­pect of the game. And, I am pret­ty sure the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um would be fin­ished and we can spend $8 or $9 mil­lion on the Cou­va Cen­tre, and get that in­to a first class train­ing fa­cil­i­ty," he said.

Guillen added, "Take the dif­fer­ence of that mon­ey and build an in­door crick­et fa­cil­i­ty in the east, an in­door fa­cil­i­ty in south to in­crease the amount of peo­ple who can play the game lat­er on in the af­ter­noon and in the evening, with bowl­ing ma­chines and coach­es and get more clubs in­volved with those fa­cil­i­ties. And I agree the Lara Sta­di­um should be hand­ed over to the TTCB."