Vin­ode Mam­chan

Tonight, when you sit and look at the West In­dies Women bat­tle Aus­tralia in the fi­nals of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) World Cup, spare a thought for all those women who, on­ly a cou­ple years ago, had to bat­tle for recog­ni­tion in or­der to make this spe­cial oc­ca­sion a re­al­i­ty.

I would like to per­son­al­ly con­grat­u­late peo­ple like Ann Browne-John, the late Jean Carmi­no, Gayle Daniel-Wor­rell, Mar­garete White and Joyce­lyn Opadeyi for their con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of the women's game in this coun­try as this pro­vid­ed the cat­a­lyst that has land­ed them a place in the pres­ti­gious fi­nals.

It was T&T that showed the rest of the Caribbean that there was a place for women's crick­et in the re­gion. Ann Browne-John, the for­mer West In­dies cap­tain, was the spear­head of the ef­fort and she got her friends who were well qual­i­fied in their re­spec­tive fields to come on board and as­sist in form­ing a vi­brant as­so­ci­a­tion that would deal with women's crick­et.I re­mem­ber Browne bring­ing in­to the fold Daniel-Wor­rell, who did not play the game but was a very ef­fec­tive leader and one who got peo­ple around her to work. Carmi­no was al­ways the wise head and the go-to per­son, while White took to her job with great gus­to.

At that time, women's crick­et hard­ly got a line in the news­pa­per or a men­tion in the night­ly tele­vi­sion sports­casts. Browne-John used to call me as a jour­nal­ist and plead for a lit­tle recog­ni­tion, not for her­self but the girls who were play­ing the game. She want­ed to get the scores and sto­ries out be­cause she want­ed to at­tract school­girls from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to get in­volved in the game.

She promised then that one day when women's crick­et ris­es in the re­gion, it would sur­pass the men. Well, her word has come to pass and to­day I would like to pay re­spects to Ann and the rest of the girls who fought a good fight for women's crick­et. Up un­til now Ann still ad­min­is­trates crick­et and is both on the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) and T&T Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (TTWCA). What Ann and com­pa­ny did was to take the game in­to the schools and soon in­ter­est­ed girls start­ed to en­rol in ladies' crick­et clubs around the coun­try. The num­ber of clubs and mem­ber­ship rose and the Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion start­ed to or­gan­ise camps for the play­ers to keep the in­ter­est go­ing.

At one point, when there was no re­gion­al youth tour­na­ment, Ann got frus­trat­ed as the young girls were com­ing to prac­tice and there was no where at the end of the camps for the girls to go out and show what they learnt. She lob­bied with oth­ers for the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), which was put in charge of women's crick­et by the ICC, to sched­ule an un­der-19 se­ries, and was suc­cess­ful.T&T played in this and eas­i­ly won the tour­na­ment be­cause our girls were well pre­pared. They were well coached and the Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion, with lit­tle fund­ing, was able to pro­vide a lot. A shot in the arm for women's crick­et came when the TTCB took them un­der their um­brel­la and fund­ing start­ed to im­prove. With Ann sit­ting on the TTCB's ex­ec­u­tive and get­ting sup­port from fel­low ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Patrick Ram­per­sad, who had done a lot for the women's game, they were able to twist the arm of the oth­ers, who bought in­to their ideas.

Soon the do­mes­tic ladies league in T&T be­came very at­trac­tive and com­pet­i­tive and play­ers from around the re­gion start­ed to come in to par­tic­i­pate. All of a sud­den Caribbean eye­balls were trained to Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­spec­tive women's as­so­ci­a­tions were look­ing to see what was be­ing done in T&T, so they could copy and get the same suc­cess.

Al­though T&T con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate re­gion­al women's crick­et, the oth­er coun­tries have raised their stan­dard and hence the en­tire women's game in the Caribbean im­proved. As a re­sult, the West In­dies team was pro­vid­ed with a num­ber of tal­ent­ed and young girls to play the sport, and the march for­ward be­gan.How­ev­er, as we march for­ward, it is al­ways good to look back and thank those who would have be­lieved in the dream even be­fore some would have thought of it.