Ad­min­is­tra­tive man­ag­er of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board, (T&TCB), and for­mer min­is­ter of Sport, Manohar Ram­saran wants to see crick­et in Trinidad reach the top in the Caribbean be­fore he demits of­fice. The af­fa­ble Ram­saran took up du­ties at the T&TCB in Jan­u­ary, re­plac­ing the long-stand­ing Ramb­hai Pa­tel. Since then he has been very busy putting sys­tems in place to get T&T back to the top of the heap. "My main am­bi­tion is to see T&T be­come dom­i­nant again in the Caribbean. To achieve this we need to be ag­gres­sive and that is why I have tak­en no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od in this job. I have been around the place get­ting the ball rolling so we can be­gin that jour­ney that will take us back to the top. "We have a very good pres­i­dent in Az­im Bas­sarath and he is a man that tru­ly has crick­et at heart. With him at the helm, we will be able to take the game very far in this coun­try."

One of the ma­jor ini­tia­tives Ram­saran is pi­lot­ing at the mo­ment is get­ting stu­dents in the pri­ma­ry schools to be­gin play­ing crick­et at an ear­li­er age than the ten years old, which has been put in place for them. "I think we can start the crick­et at an ear­li­er age in the schools and I am urg­ing all those prin­ci­pals in the var­i­ous schools to make an ef­fort to get the par­ents and teach­ers to buy in­to this. "I have al­ready met with the pres­i­dent of the pri­ma­ry schools crick­et league Ian Ram­lal and we had a very pro­gres­sive meet­ing. The idea is one that we in­tend to go through with." Ram­saran served as min­is­ter of sports from 1998 to 2000 and then for six months in 2001 and ac­cord­ing to him his great­est achieve­ment was putting turf pitch­es across the coun­try. "Build­ing turf pitch­es across the coun­try was my biggest achieve­ment. By hav­ing turf pitch­es built, the game would de­vel­op and many clubs ben­e­fit­ted from that pro­gramme. I be­lieved it was bet­ter to build pitch­es and pavil­ions across the coun­try, rather than put all the funds in­to one project like the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um. I al­so as­sist­ed in the build­ing of the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre."

Ram­saran is no stranger to the game, as he played at a high lev­el do­mes­ti­cal­ly and is cur­rent­ly the pres­i­dent of Munroe Road Crick­et Club. He start­ed his crick­et at his al­ma mater Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas and then moved on to Cromp­ton Crick­et Club in the North. "I played for Cromp­ton be­cause I was work­ing in Port-of-Spain as a Cus­toms of­fi­cer and could not reach home in time to prac­tice. So I de­cid­ed to play with Cromp­ton and played with guys like Claude Phillip and Aneal Ra­jah. Pri­or to this at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege I played with the likes of Rangy Nanan and Dud­nath Ramkessoon." Af­ter this he was moved to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and then he start­ed to play for Ca­roni Con­querors. "In 1984 I de­cid­ed to quit Ca­roni Con­querors be­cause peo­ple in Munroe Road want­ed me to come home and play and I did that, and af­ter my play­ing days end­ed I got in­to ad­min­is­tra­tion and have been the pres­i­dent for 22 years." Dur­ing his play­ing days Ram­saran scored 23 cen­turies and had a best bowl­ing of 9/54. Ram­saran is mar­ried to chut­ney singer Am­i­na Ram­saran and has two sons. Ravi is an en­gi­neer, while Vi­noo is a med­ical doc­tor, prac­tic­ing in the Unit­ed States.